Irvine511 said:
but i also think it's interesting that even within slightly derogatory terms for white people -- and if a northerner were to call a southerner a "cracker," i'd view it as a term of disparagement -- we have contested meanings, and only people who "know" can accurately use that term. thusly tying this all back in to what Snoop was saying. how do you feel when a black person calls a white person like Imus, who's clearly not of the cracker culture you describe? or when a white gay Texan who grew up poor moves to WeHo and mis-used the phrase?
actually, just talking to Memphis right now, and he says that the term "cracker" is actually a black-created term for a white slave master, one who'd crack the whip out in the fields.
I think it's one of those words that's considered 'etymologically obscure' and actually has several theories of origin--a variant(?) of the one Memphis cited which I've heard is, people of that category were often cattle herders originally, and cracked their whips to round up their animals (I suspect that theory is only meant to apply to 'crackers' in Bama's sense). But anyhow, where I grew up in MS--and I gather it might(?) be the same where Memphis is from--I only ever heard black people use that term, and it was clearly meant to be pejorative, basically suggesting a socially backwards (and presumably bigoted, as part of that) white person. Not unlike the rather loose sense in which northerners often use "redneck", but maybe a little more innately hostile. I remember in
O Brother, Where Art Thou there's a scene where one white Mississippian calls another "you dumb cracker", aparently more or less with (what I would consider) the intended sense of "you dumb hick", and that struck my ear as bizarre, because I'd never, ever heard a white Mississippian use that term, nor would I ever take it as synonymous with "hick". But for all I know, in central and eastern MS (hill country as opposed to Delta country, which to Mississippians entails a cultural distinction) it might carry different nuances.
I don't think this makes the greatest analogy to (e.g.) the n-word though, because unlike cracker, redneck, hick, hillbilly, "white trash" etc., the history of that word is not one of nuanced or variable socioeconomic/geographical distinctions, but rather a blanket term for all black people ascribing a blanket inferior status to them, even when used casually and without any conscious malice, per se (whereas I never heard a black person where I grew up use "cracker" with anything less than, at the very least, conscious contempt and a clear intended reference to a particular
type of white person). "Jigaboo" (since that was used in the Imus segment in question) is similar, with only the distinction that it suggests particularly pronounced African features physically. So I think those are way more loaded terms, and hence subject to stricter rules as to who can use them and when without unintentionally provoking strong offense. I would tend to see that association as carrying over to "nappy-headed"; "ho" may be somewhat different, but again, given the history behind (white-held) stereotypes of blacks in general and black women in particular as oversexed (which are in turn related to stereotypes of blacks as 'brutish'--perhaps[?] what you had in mind by pointing out your mother sometimes comments on the "roughness" of UConn players), I think there's a built-in red flag there...even setting aside the more 'race-neutral' sexism encoded by the term, i.e., women by default are "whores", sex objects first and foremost, unless they possess certain 'redeeming' character traits as defined by men.
maycocksean said:
I guess the question that came to my mind, is why is he telling me this? Is he challenging me to defend Jackson and Sharpton? Or is he assuming that since I'm a "nice" non-threatening black guy with a "white" accent, that I'll agree with him, and he'll get to feel more secure in his position because he's now got a black ally?
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Then yesterday afternoon, I went hiking with a friend of mine, and he asks me what the "Black Community" thinks about all this, and I was trying to explain that there's really no way for me to answer that question. I can't speak for on behalf of "my Community" anymore than he can speak for the "white community." I was explaining that--at least in my view, men like Sharpton and Jackson--are self-appointed "spokespersons" for the "Black Community." I see them as opportunists who take advantage of the fact that many white people want/expect a go-to Black Person who can speak for the "community."
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Granted, I think many blacks feel like I do, that if a black person is being attacked, you feel a sense that you need to defend them (the whole I can say what I want about my mom but if you start talking about her we have a problem). When the red-faced guy came up to me, my first instinct was to defend Jackson and Sharpton even though I personally don't care for them at all. So that may also contribute to the sense that blacks are part of this "community" that all thinks the same way.
This is the main reason why the (apparent) tendency for many who feel the Imus case went too far, too fast, and for the wrong reasons to condense it down to 'that fork-tongued fraud Sharpton railroaded him, it's all his fault' bothers me. I don't wholly disagree with the too-far,-too-fast,-wrong-reasons analysis so far as it goes, for reasons already explained, but it's just silly to pin the entire weight of a week's worth of heated national public discourse on him, and to me it smacks of an attempt to take a perceived 'go-to' figure (which as you pointed out is a problematic concept to begin with, and ironically one Imus himself validated by appearing on Sharpton's show), then exploit that personification to make him into The Bad Guy, which then by extension makes black people in general 'accountable' for any and all aspects of it. I've felt somewhat similarly before towards perceptions of the fallout from widely-reported incidents of anti-Semitic talk by some public figure, for example with the whole Mel Gibson thing last year, I got to the point where I just grimaced and closed up like a clam most times when the topic came up. The papers run headlines asserting "Jewish leaders" (or "black leaders" in Imus' case) are
OUTRAGED!! (almost invariably the term used) about such-and-such said by so-and-so, and are
DEMANDING!! this or that type of response, and next thing you know you get friends and coworkers asking Well how come You People feel This Way about it? and that can really get galling, because it seems to assume there's some archetypally 'You People' response which you can either serve as a proxy cross-examination opportunity for, or else perhaps please them by proclaiming your stark disagreement with. Sometimes in spite of myself I perversely feel like playing the former role, because the apparent insinuation that I, too, must be damningly 'unreasonable' just like the Go-To guy, if I also happen to be offended, seems so insulting (to both me and Mr. Go-To); and sometimes I perversely feel like playing the latter out of this sense of, OK, so you wanna see some independent thinking, well here it is--and by the way, F you, because
you certainly aren't displaying it right now.
Of course there's always the possibility of countering all that by replying in a carefully nuanced way, but it gets tiresome to feel like you have to do it, and even then I'm sometimes left with uncomfortable doubts as to whether I perhaps only succeeded in fulfilling some kind of unwarranted expectation. If I'm being honest about it, it's fair to say I probably sometimes suspect this kind of dynamic is there when it really isn't, and I don't want to get self-defeatist nor undeservedly resentful, so I really try not to. But the dynamic has clearly been there enough times to make such situations uncomfortable.
