Poll: Is Cracker a derogatory term? And can one be racist against white people?

[Creator002]

I'm pretty sure you can be racist against whites.
For example: White people are inferior to all other races and should be hanged, gassed and shot solely due to their skin colour.

 

[Riot3000]

Wait hold up people still use the word cracker? I mean did we jump into a blaxpoitation flick when I was not looking.

 

[Politrukk]

It is a derogatory term, HOWEVER it does not have anywhere close to the same weight derogatory terms aimed at other races have.

Perhaps because we don't take it as badly?

I don't know when you hear with what venom some people use the term....

Like sure you can laugh it off but that tone of voice, the person saying it usually has some deep down hatred of you purely because you're white even if you didn't do anything to them, obviously one can laugh it off but it does have some deeper connotation right?

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yes, I suppose 'cracker' is a derogatory term. Yes, it is possible to be racist towards white people. That being said, as a white person, if somebody actually tried to hurt my feelings or get a rise out of me by calling me a cracker, I would likely laugh. It carries almost no weight for me and sounds rather silly.

 

[KissingSunlight]

Also, I am very sick and tired of people claiming you can't be racist or sexist against white people and men. I am a white male. No way in hell can you look at my life any and say that I am privileged and/or in power. I don't have time right now to look it up. There is an insightful and funny commentary about the myth of privilege from a book written in the late 90's. I'll find it and share with you tomorrow.

You're looking at the concept a little too simply. It most certainly is not a myth nor does its existence trivialize your relative lower standing to a caricatured, powerful white person. Here's a good example [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255.html] of what I mean. Sad it comes from The Huffington Post of all places but whatever.

That said, white privilege does not mean you can't act discriminatory towards white men. However, racism and sexism in their most powerful forms depend on systemic discrimination against minorities, especially historically disenfranchised minorities. It often exists in spite of goodwill from majorities in the dominant party due to their ignorance on how the system continues to sustain it and their own casual racism and sexism. Like someone else said,

Yes, it's racist, yes you can be racist against whites.

BUT... who gives a shit? Racism in general is an issue when one group wields power over another, it's just about booboos on your feelings. If you're in a part of the world where you're a "cracker", chances are you can afford to shrug it off. Shit, chances are you can shoot the person and claim self defense... I'd say that's a bigger issue, but what do I know.

I skimmed the article that you posted the link to. I'll read it completely later on. Right now, I am tired after a long day. From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

OK. I promised to share a book passage that address the issue of privilege that I've never heard anyone mention. The book is The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams. It was written in 1997.

Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there. We men like to think we're in charge because most of the top jobs in business and government are held by men, but I have a shocking statistical insight for you men-THOSE ARE OTHER MEN. The total percentage of men in those top spots is roughly .0000001 percent of the male population. I'm not one of them. I just draw cartoons and write these stupid books. Chances are, if you're a man reading this, you're not running the world, either.

I have about as much in common with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company as I have with my cat. It's not logical to say that I, as a man, run the world based on the fact that total strangers with similar chromosomes have excellent jobs. Yet that is exactly what many people believe.

When the Joint Chiefs of Staff are deciding whether to go to war, they do not call my house and say, "We're calling all the men who run the world to ask for their input." Believe it or not, they make those decisions without consulting me. That's probably a good thing...

(humorous digression about foreign policy)...

Someone might argue that men have access to the top jobs whereas women do not. There's some truth to that, but the mathematical fact is, 99.9999999 percent of all men can't get those top jobs, either. There aren't enough of those jobs to go around.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I skimmed the article that you posted the link to. I'll read it completely later on. Right now, I am tired after a long day. From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

Er, no, the article is about the present. Now, the causes of the issues might have started some time way back in history, but the effects are felt to this day.

 

[kyp275]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011, 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

For some reason I suspect you'd feel differently if you or your loved one were one of the murder victims. I doubt you'd say "Well, they killed my mom, but who gives a fuck, she's just a raindrop to a storm anyway".

If you had said that to the victim's family to their face, they'd probably be very tempted to make you into a raindrop too.

 

[MonsterCrit]

But its usage has no positive connotations whatsoever in that context?


To me slave trading and plantation ownership were very harmful things, I've never once in my life had anything to do with either.

Slave owners were rich and powerful. It's like when people taunt Jews about their 'Jewgold'. You're insulting them by referencing their wealth. Surely that's a poor insult?

Er slight correction. The Slave/Plantation owners were rich.. the people they had out in the fields overseeing and cracking the whips were just every day low class white people.

To put it in more modern terms. Factory owners .. rich... but the foremen who directly deal with the workers.. would you call them rich and powerful?

Yes the word Cracker is racist, but it doesn't really refer to the whip cracking... not it's basically a comment of the coloration of their skin. Take a look at any milk crackers, saltine, or water crackers or cream crackers and you can see where the parallels are drawn."Beke' and 'Honky' are lso similar terms referencing the shape of their noses. 'Beke' in case you couldn't tell was pretty much 'Beaky'.

As for, can you be racist against white people? Yeah, I am so waiting for the day we can email punches and slaps through the interwebs because I swear I would burn the servers out sending them to every one who even mentions such an asinine thing. Look, racism is racism. If the comment or treatment is based on the person's ethnicity or race. Then it is racist, no matter which direction or what action. Just as it just as sexist to expect a man to hold a door open for a woman or to give his seat on the bus up for a woman as it is to expect a woman to stay at home to cook and clean.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Kind of? I mean, a slave owner is in a position of power. Can that really be considered offensive? If anything it seems like anyone who'd call someone else 'Cracker' is kind of disrespecting themselves. Unless they're trying to inspire some feelings of white guilt?

I'm not saying minorities can't be racist, but I'm not sure cracker is a... bad term for lack of a better phrase.

I guess you could say it ranks up there calling your boss a tyrant or slave driver. Though if it does mean someone who cracks a whip it might also mean someone who wields unrecognised power through their access to capital then the person says it?

If you have no money, and you see a white person who obviously has money, the could 'cracker' then be used to delineate or expose someone to the concept that they wield power in a fashion that is not immediately obvious to the person?

I don't know ... not American. How common is it for people to be called 'cracker' in the US? I think that kind of needs to be looked at. Not only that, but is cracker reserved for middle class and higher white people? If it's just reserved for a certain socioeconomic class of white people, then it might not be racist at all?

It could be kind of like saying 'white trash' ... given that multiple racial background types of people seem to wield it against white people living in trailer parks (incl. wealthier white people) ... one of the first places I encountered 'White trash' was on the show Becker from said protagonist. Danson seems pretty white to me.

 

[one squirrel]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011[footnote]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter[/footnote], 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

Yes and no. Each single instance of racial aggression is bad, and comparing it to "a raindop in a storm" is still downplaying and dismissive of the problems of a few, because others supposedly have it worse.

Which they do. Its shrewd calculus. If you don't like it, you have a problem with math, not myself. I didn't say "white people don't experience racism", I just said that its not on a scale comparable to other races in nations where the populace is pre-dominantly white (and a few that aren't), which is where most of the people who visit the forums here are from.

snip

(50%/12%)/(50%/88%)=7.3 times more likely to be killed for racial reasons if you are not white. That's well within the same order of magnitude. And that is only if you assume that you can divide all murders trough the aggregate population, again assuming that murders and races are distributed equally on the map.

That means that there can be white people who experience more racism, just because they happen to live in the wrong city district.

 

[NiPah]

Racist? Yes. Is it possible to be racist against white people? Yes, but it'll never be as substantial as people who aren't white will experience in many if not all of the pre-dominantly white nations of the world. A raindrop to a storm.

That's quite a bold statement to make, also completely unprovable since we don't have a way to measure substantiality of amount of racism centered on a certain group.

 

[Areloch]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

 

[Ishal]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

I tend to agree. Racism is bad.

Anything resembling "Racism can occur against [X], BUT" is a part of the problem

No but. It's bad, it's wrong. Don't do it.

 

[EvilRoy]

"Nearly half of all victims of racially motivated murders in the last decade have been white, according to official figures released by the Home Office."

According to the UK census of 2011[footnote]http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter[/footnote], 88% of the people in the UK are white. Thats disproportionately low, only proving my point.

Yes and no. Each single instance of racial aggression is bad, and comparing it to "a raindop in a storm" is still downplaying and dismissive of the problems of a few, because others supposedly have it worse.

Which they do. Its shrewd calculus. If you don't like it, you have a problem with math, not myself. I didn't say "white people don't experience racism", I just said that its not on a scale comparable to other races in nations where the populace is pre-dominantly white (and a few that aren't), which is where most of the people who visit the forums here are from.

Well yes, but the problem with that outlook is that everyone has it shittier than you, making it a useless point. Somewhere on Earth there is one asshole, and I know he is an asshole because it is basically a necessity for his existence, who has it worse than everyone else in every way. On that basis, and by the same logic, we can determine that every single problem we have in the first world - rasim, classism, transphobia, sexism - is a raindrop in a storm compared to the shit this asshole has to deal with. Even if we back it off a bit and just talk about his shithole country, they still guaranteed have it so bad compared to us that so many of the problems that this forum covers are absolutely and ultimately meaningless compared to the shit they sit in.

The point is: it either all matters, or none of it matters.

 

[Politrukk]

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

That wasn't the point of the thread when I made it though :/

 

[jamail77]

OK. I promised to share a book passage that address the issue of privilege that I've never heard anyone mention. The book is The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams. It was written in 1997.

So, none of that is obvious? People who actually know what they're talking about when they talk about white male privilege acknowledge this as I already said in my post.

nor does its existence trivialize your relative lower standing to a caricatured, powerful white person.

I literally don't know anyone who argues HashtagAllMen have the power of world leaders or CEOs when they talk about privilege. That's not what the term is for. That passage really doesn't paint the book in a good light honestly. It's awfully rambly and low on practical, in-the-know insight let alone relevant knowledge to the conversation. He sees the conversation in a much more simplified manner than it actually is as if both the adults educated to study these issues and those who have to live with those issues talk about them like that. I can see why his Dilbert comic strips come up more than that book if that is what the whole book is like.

[snip]From what I understand, it's the argument that white and/or men are privilege because of history. The pushback to that argument is you can legally discriminate against white people and men right now in the present.

Er, no, the article is about the present. Now, the causes of the issues might have started some time way back in history, but the effects are felt to this day.

Exactly. When you get around to reading the article in full Sunlight she goes into the concept of intersectionality, how the systems of oppression, domination, and discrimination overlap and always interrelate with each other. Despite her very poor childhood she came to recognize there are privileges she had nonetheless and remained secure enough that people who tell her of her privileges USUALLY (there are always people who don't know what they're talking about) don't say it to attack her personally or belittle her issues. The concept of intersectionality actually demands that people acknowledge overall how her childhood was worse than certain subsections or individuals in minorities that tend to be less well off as a whole. And, even then she still had certain privileges over those otherwise more well off, more privileged minority individuals and subsections simply for collecting unearned social benefits to being white.

Anybody who gets to her level of knowledge of the issues and continues to be personally offended when people discuss white privilege are very insecure frankly. They probably lack understanding of the analysis despite the knowledge of it and, in some cases, lack complete empathy in these spheres of life. The latter probably tend to be sociopathic though. I can respect someone who gets to that point and nonetheless disagrees with the conclusion, but if they understand where the opposing argument is coming from and take offense despite that understanding? Yeah...

These threads are always magical.

Because they ALWAYS devolve into people attempting to swing statistics around and math out who is more oppressed in ever-more specific and minute contexts to "win" than anyone agreeing that being racist is kinda awful.

Nope, it's all about who's MORE racist, and therefore being racist AGAINST them is fine.

I tend to agree. Racism is bad.

Anything resembling "Racism can occur against [X], BUT" is a part of the problem

No but. It's bad, it's wrong. Don't do it.

I see quite a few people pointing that out and still arguing racism is bad regardless. Those arguments are not meant to excuse racism towards the usually more dominant. It's not about a racism contest. It's about the acknowledgment. Understanding that context is important in dealing with racism because it's inherently not equal. The worst of racism is systemic, the much rarer racism towards the usually less oppressed is not except maybe as a systemic response to systemic racism. That does not make it okay. It's just that the understanding will help societies overcome it.

Not talking about this and simply handwaving the complexity of these issues with the "It's all bad" excuse is what is actually part of the problem. Few are arguing it's not all bad. It takes more than that to tackle the issue. Literally all discrimination I've dealt with is monumentally easier to shrug off and less dire than that people of other groups have to deal with. That scale matters. Yet, I've never felt that discrimination towards me is overly trivialized because of that prioritizing.