In turn, that has inspired many people sympathetic to Martin to write that cracker really isn't all that bad. Cracker is no big deal, he explains:. A racial slur? Sure, technically speaking. A real racial slur?
Sadly, no. There are no good racial slurs for white people. Despite the fact that white Americans have committed far more atrocities against the other races of the world than all of those races combined have committed against white people, there is no one single slur in popular usage that can really cut a white person to their soft, marshmallowy core.
Counting the atrocities seems like a weird way to justify a word's sluriness. We wouldn't want to use racial slurs against North Sudanese people even though the North Sudanese people committed genocide against the South Sudanese.
At Mediaite, Tommy Christopher noted that "cracker" has some interesting history that's not so racial. And at NPR, Gene Demby explains the etymology of cracker, noting that Cracker is an old-fashioned way of building a house in Florida to beat the heat. Demby writes:. By the early s, those immigrants to the South started to refer to themselves that way as a badge of honor and a term of endearment.
I'm pretty sure this process of reappropriating a disparaging term sounds familiar to a lot of y'all. But that doesn't matter, because cracker is the least important word in the phrase Jeantel testified Martin said.
The important part is "creepy-ass"! The critical facts to figure out in the case is whether Zimmerman reacted appropriately to the threat he perceived. Was Martin an aggressive, scary, violent teenager who beat up Zimmerman, leaving him no choice but to use lethal force?
Or was Zimmerman aggressively following Martin when he confronted him, and shot him for no good reason? If Martin did indeed say a "creepy-ass" white dude was following him, it indicates he was afraid of Zimmerman.
Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. This article is from the archive of our partner. And both words were used on a really old Saturday Night Live skit! But ultimately the question misses the point because these words are not what either case is about. A s Daryl K. Washington points out, the Deen case is actually about Deen failing to control her brother, Bubba Hier at left , who ran her restaurants and treated the black employees poorly.
According to the lawsuit, black employees could only use the back entrance, couldn't work in the front of the restaurants, could only use one bathroom, and had to put up with him using the n-word a lot, and in a demeaning way.
You just look dirty; I bet you wish you could. Like Nolan, I am also from the South. I was called cracker in city elementary school, and it hurt my feelings! You can see my permanent facial expression in that era at right. A class of people who were landless. Initially, cracker was not a pejorative term, but Ferris says it has become one, the equivalent of redneck. Its meaning and intensity as an insult depends on who is saying it and who is listening.
For example, a white who might not object to being called a cracker by another white might consider Martin's use of the phrase offensive and evidence of ill intent. George Zimmerman in his own words Did Zimmerman prosecution overreach? Covering the George Zimmerman trial In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger.
He didn't say it to Zimmerman. He said it to convey a message to a friend. He said, 'trouble is coming. Still, even if Martin knew precisely what the term meant and said it with all the venom he could muster, does that matter?
Under Florida's hate crime laws, Martin's words could potentially have been used against him had he survived the encounter and Zimmerman had taken the worst of it. That may seem far-fetched, but a state handbook advises that a hate crime may have occurred "if the commission of a felony or misdemeanor evidences prejudice based on the race, color, ancestry, ethnicity Complicating the matter further: Despite suspicions among many case watchers that Zimmerman followed Martin largely because he was African-American, the only mention of race from the defendant in his call to the police that night about a "suspicious guy" came when he was questioned.
Where did the N-word come from? All of this may seem pointless to people who focus on the central fact of this case: No matter how the conflict began, police say it ended with an armed man killing an unarmed one. The debate over cracker may furthermore seem arcane to people who live north of the Mason-Dixon line, where cracker is seldom heard, and even when it makes an appearance, it is not freighted with decades of history.
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