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'Cracker' conveys history of bigotry that still resonates
The Philadelphia Tribune ^ | July 2, 2013 | Tom Foreman

Posted on 07/04/2013 2:44:01 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

With a single phrase, Rachel Jeantel, that friend of Trayvon Martin's, may have lit a fuse in the trial of his accused killer.

Asked by the defense what Martin told her on the phone that night when he first spotted George Zimmerman, she testified a "creepy-ass cracker" was following him. There is nothing illegal about that. Jeantel said she didn't even know it was a racial slur, and numerous commentators have noted that some in Florida use the term in a non-derogatory, colloquial sense.

But for plenty of rural, white southerners, "cracker" is a demeaning, bigoted term, and its appearance does nothing to help the prosecutors.

The origin of cracker is murky. Some sources suggest it came from overseers who commanded slaves. Others say it derives from a Scottish word for boasting. At The Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Bill Ferris says it emerged in the 1700s as a descriptive term for drovers who used small whips to move their livestock through the pine barrens along the Gulf of Mexico. "They were basically poor people. White people. 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.

In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. "If it is used by Blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out.....

(Excerpt) Read more at phillytrib.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption
KEYWORDS: hatecrime; racheljeantel; trayvon; zimmerman
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So Traydmark could've been charged with a "hate crime" had he survived his encounter? Who here thinks that ever would've happened?
1 posted on 07/04/2013 2:44:01 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I understand the word to be from Florida ranchers cracking their whips to move cattle.


2 posted on 07/04/2013 2:51:37 AM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

So..........latinos are crackers too?


3 posted on 07/04/2013 2:58:18 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (Yesterdays conspiracies are todays truths)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Prosecution and allied media have spent how much time, attempting to depict racial animus on the part of George Zimmerman? Yet here we have not just an admission but actual use in open court of term that really is racially derogatory, but it’s dismissed, explained away. If racial animus provides a pretext for attacking, it provides a pretext for attacking, but the attacker would be Trayvon Martin, consistent with what George Zimmerman has claimed all along.


4 posted on 07/04/2013 2:58:44 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
some in Florida use the term in a non-derogatory, colloquial sense.

Yeah, especially when used with the "creepy-ass" modifier, that just tells you that it's "non-derogatory".

Right?

5 posted on 07/04/2013 3:01:47 AM PDT by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: RegulatorCountry

And nigger ain’t nothin’ more’n lazy language for negro.


6 posted on 07/04/2013 3:02:23 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof, but they're true.)
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To: cripplecreek
Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

Florida was pretty much free range when I was a kid, people earmarked their hogs and cattle and turned them loose. When they wanted one they would go catch it. People with no land could get permission to run livestock on timber company land and many did.

Every so often there would be a roundup to count and earmark new calves and pigs.

I feel fortunate to have known some of those old timers personally.

7 posted on 07/04/2013 3:09:22 AM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, a Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: knarf
And nigger ain’t nothin’ more’n lazy language for negro.

Some compromised with the term "nigra." LBJ was one of them.

8 posted on 07/04/2013 3:11:37 AM PDT by luvbach1 (We are finished.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

9 posted on 07/04/2013 3:11:52 AM PDT by JoeProBono (Mille vocibus imago valet;-{)
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To: JoeProBono

“You are going have to kill some Crackers” You are going to have kill some of their babies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVcfymOvoUo


10 posted on 07/04/2013 3:24:30 AM PDT by Uncle Lonny
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

From the article: “Initially, cracker was not a pejorative term, but Ferris says it has become one, the equivalent of redneck.”

I put it to anyone out there that ‘cracker’ is a good bit more of a pejorative term than ‘redneck’. I’ve been called a ‘Saltine’ in the Bronx. ‘Redneck’ would have seemed like jocular repartee, in contrast.

“So Traydmark could’ve been charged with a “hate crime” had he survived his encounter? Who here thinks that ever would’ve happened?”

It’s pretty evident that all those ‘hate crime’ laws were intended as ‘rights for me, but not for thee’. Time to flip the script on them, seems to me.


11 posted on 07/04/2013 3:28:28 AM PDT by OldNewYork (Biden '13. Impeach now.)
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To: Uncle Lonny

12 posted on 07/04/2013 3:29:22 AM PDT by JoeProBono (Mille vocibus imago valet;-{)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Traydmark......funny....very funny...kudos...


13 posted on 07/04/2013 3:29:54 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Another thing. Is this guy Tom Foreman who wrote this white?

I'll only accept a white person using that word and not take it offensively. It is only for us

14 posted on 07/04/2013 3:32:06 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: luvbach1
How LBJ got away with his constant language is an excersize in media on kneepads.
15 posted on 07/04/2013 3:32:33 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true ... I have no proof, but they're true.)
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To: Uncle Lonny

Another example of blacks using the word “Cracker” as a racist insult:

“The man and woman didn’t know each other, but were both arriving about 1:40 a.m. at the Preserve at Cedar River when they were targeted.

“I was getting out of my car when he came up to me with a gun,” the female victim said.

Though she knew the man was armed, she still wrestled for her purse that contained the $150 she made after a night of bartending.

The male victim was sitting in his car, getting his things together, when he heard her screams just across the road that separates their buildings, he said.

He got out of the car to see what was happening.

“That’s when he said, ‘Don’t move, cracker,’ and put the gun to the back of my head,” he said.

Both victims also saw a third gunman standing on the sidewalk with what appeared to be a semi-automatic rifle watching over the two robberies.

The victims described their attackers as three black males in their 20s..........

http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2013-04-05/story/2-residents-robbed-1-shot-friday-confederate-point-road-apartments#ixzz2PbRe1uDd


16 posted on 07/04/2013 3:35:32 AM PDT by Uncle Lonny
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Let’s be real...in this day and age, it’s a synonym for wmf


17 posted on 07/04/2013 3:50:49 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: cripplecreek

“I understand the word to be from Florida ranchers cracking their whips to move cattle.”

‘Lots of meanings. The one associated with the term most is the slavemasters who “cracked” the whip on their slaves. More than a little offensive to those who owned no slaves and to those who fought to have the slaves freed. Biting the hand that freed you is as ugly as the N word.


18 posted on 07/04/2013 4:14:17 AM PDT by freeangel ( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)
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To: OldNewYork

““So Traydmark could’ve been charged with a “hate crime” had he survived his encounter? Who here thinks that ever would’ve happened?”

It’s pretty evident that all those ‘hate crime’ laws were intended as ‘rights for me, but not for thee’.”

Exactly! Obama’s Attorney General, Eric “my people” Holder has openly stated that federal hate crime laws do not apply to White Americans who are violently attacked because of their race:

http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2012/01/whites-not-protected-by-hate-crime-laws.html

Ironically, if Zimmerman beats the state railroading, the Injustice Department of Eric Holder is waiting in the wings to charge him with federal violations of Martins civil rights. based on the “streets” theory of civil rights:

http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2013/01/equal-justice-under-law-and-street.html

Nor are black on white violent hate crimes just an academic question either. Here are several links that document thousands of black on white violent assaults, murders and hate rapes, many of them clearly motivated by racial animus against whites:

http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2012/07/275-different-documented-attacks.html

http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2012/08/104-elderly-white-women-hate-raped-and.html

http://blackracismandracehatred.blogspot.com/2012/05/320-whites-murdered-in-their-homes-by.html

The Corrupt Liberal Media ignoring the significance of “cracker” is minor compared to the CLM ignoring the Department of Injustice’s double standard on racially motivated hate crimes and their refusal to acknowledge or connect the dots to thousands of black on white hate crimes in the USA every year.

BTW, according to the National Civil Rights Memorial, a total of 40 people were murdered during the Civil Rights Era from 1954 to 1968 in the South by white racist thugs. This includes the infamous murders of Medger Evers, Emmit Till, the Birmingham church bombings, etc, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Memorial

Now compare these 40 murders by racist whites with the thousands of murders by racist blacks since then and the media coverage of each category.

The operative word in “The Corrupt Liberal Media” is “Corrupt”!

Liberalism has killed journalism.


19 posted on 07/04/2013 4:14:18 AM PDT by Uncle Lonny
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To: Uncle Lonny

Hmmmmph! It’s a good thing the victims didn’t shoot in order to protect themselves. They would have been tried for protecting themselves before they were shot first.


20 posted on 07/04/2013 4:17:32 AM PDT by freeangel ( (free speech is only good until someone else doesn't like it)
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