It’s OK, they’re just crackers
The last acceptable prejudice: hillbillies and rednecks. You can substitute the term “red stater” as well with a lot of the same crowd, I would think.
12 Responses to “It’s OK, they’re just crackers”
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May 13th, 2014 at 10:14 pm
Planning on heading to Redneck territory as soon as I retire . Maryland has become a complete cesspool .
May 13th, 2014 at 10:25 pm
Cracker, redneck, hillbilly, red-stater…I embrace them all, not as epithets but as proud and accurate descriptors, both historical and contemporary.
It’s what separates me from the Blue People, and that makes me smile.
May 14th, 2014 at 2:10 am
I embrace them as well. I don’t care if a non-redneck, non-hillbilly, non-cracker calls me one either.
May 14th, 2014 at 10:40 am
I was once waiting to cross a street in a city in Colorado. The “Don’t Walk” sign was lit. The left-turn green arrow came on, and a pickup attempted to make his left turn onto the street I would soon cross, but couldn’t because two black women were jaywalking in the intersection, coming from the opposite side that I was on. The driver stopped, waited for the women to pass, then roared on around. One of the two women looked at me, smiled, moved her head kinda sideways and shouted “Redneck!” I seriously considered calling her a jaywalking…then thought better of it.
Kinda made me think that we should just let all the rest of the name-calling back in. If it’s okay for them, it’s okay for us(Yes, I am a redneck/hillbilly/cracker/whatever).
May 14th, 2014 at 11:17 am
Funny that. The term “jaywalker” comes from “jay”, a bold and impudent person. So, you didn’t like that they were disobeying the law, or ignoring the rules? So much for libertarianism. Anyhow, I guess you could just stab “uppity” in front of the word you wanted to use…
May 14th, 2014 at 11:30 am
Please let me clarify. The jaywalking part is not what bothered me. It was the fact that she felt free to yell an epithet at the guy to which nobody could reply. If one is a “redneck”, he may be insulted with impunity…
May 14th, 2014 at 12:48 pm
It’s not okay Don, and here’s why; everything goes to intent and perception.
Now folks calling me a redneck or cracker might intend it as an insult, but my knowledge of the origins of the terms means my perception can be one of pride, allowing me to answer that yes I, or at least my recent ancestors, have indeed worked hard in the hot sun and some worked with cattle. So thank you for recognizing my heritage!
And I’ve made the case before that the epithets you had in mind were also originally based on heritage and innocuous intent…the word nigger came about as a shortened version of negro which was the correct and acceptable term for black people at the time. It was pronounced by many southerners as neegra; I clearly remember that pronunciation when I was growing up in the late 50’s/early 60’s and no slur was intended. Eventually, in typical lazy southernspeak that morphed into nigger; again originally with no intent to slur.
But the later sixties, school integration, race riots, etc. certainly did bring the term to be an intentional racial slur, especially in the south, just as cracker, honky, etc. were intended as white slurs. I remember that too; the schools in our rural Florida town integrated when I was in 5th grade in 1964, and it was not an easy transition…my 10 year old self flung that term like a weapon, with indisputably visceral intent, and I got white cracker and other terms, not to mention some pretty intense playground scuffles, in return.
Intent and perception; the words were hurled like rocks and bottles, intended to inflict pain, and that’s how they came to be perceived. The difference is the n word is still both intended and perceived as derogatory (except when used intramurally, where both intent and perception apparently renders it benign), whereas my perception of being called a redneck or cracker or hillbilly is benign regardless of intent because it’s a point of historical pride for me…you can’t hurt me with a word if I embrace it.
So I don’t call black people nigger; their perception of it as derogatory and hurtful precludes it. In my businesses I have and had a high percentage of “minority” clientele, I have a mutually respectful relationship with them all, and a very close friendship with some, and I would never intentionally hurt them by word or deed.
Much of the above can be applied to another “minority”, for better or worse soon to be the majority in this country if demographics and immigration continue on the current path. Hispanic was southern shorthanded to ‘spanic and then ‘spic within a single generation here in a state with a bunch of different iterations of them…it’s a lot easier than saying Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and all the other ‘cans, and at least in my experience was rarely intended to be derogatory. But that last version did come to be used that way by people feeling overwhelmed in their own country, and it has certainly come to be perceived that way by Hispanics themselves, so I don’t use it as the people are my customers and friends and it hurts them.
Intent and perception; you could apply those concepts to just about everything, and solve a lot of the ills of this world.
May 14th, 2014 at 1:03 pm
Agreed…and you will notice I did not use any epithet myself (note that you are making an assumption about what I might have supplied after jaywalking…the actual word that first came to my mind was “idiot”, but I admit that the other occurred to me as well, being that it might illustrate that her behavior in trying to insult a “redneck” was also not okay.)
May 14th, 2014 at 3:19 pm
You’re forgetting the prejudice within the conservative, libertarian and shooting communities against Democrats, liberals and blue states. There’s a fair amount of anti-intellectualism as well. As a liberal Democrat of fairly high intelligence who lives in a blue state, who also supports the 2A and shoots competitively, I sure feel like the “smallest minority”. It’s disheartening to realize that pretty much everyone on every side speaks and writes of the other side with prejudice, stereotypes, name-calling and crass generalizations, and dehumanizes those on the other side. Being called a “libtard” by conservatives comes off a lot like being called a “paranoid gun nut” by liberals.
May 14th, 2014 at 4:23 pm
Certainly, all the name calling is very counter productive if one’s goal is to persuade another with an opposing view. It seems that too often the goal is to attempt to demonstrate moral or intellectual superiority.
May 15th, 2014 at 6:05 am
As a liberal Democrat of fairly high intelligence who lives in a blue state, who also supports the 2A
Serious question:
Doesn’t being a 2A supporter, gun owner seem to be at odds with being a Democrat?
The Democratic party platform specifies that gun ownership is something to be curtailed or denied.
How does one do one and support the other?
May 15th, 2014 at 7:15 pm
If there were a party that represented all of my views then I wouldn’t be a Democrat, but I’d also probably be the only one in it.
The Democratic party reflects most of my views, though not all of them. From outside the party all you might see is the party’s figureheads spouting pro-gun control propaganda and fear-mongering misinformation, so it’s easy to think all Democrats feel the same, but we don’t. There are actually a lot of pro-2A Democrats, we’re just not the majority.