The Problem with “Cracker”
The problem with the word cracker was best summed up by my little sister four years ago; she was twelve at the time. It was following my racially motivated arrest and twelve hours served in jail (I have since had my record expunged) and I was livid. “Those crackers…” I began. Tiffany, though highly sensitive to my mood, still felt a need to opine, “Cracker doesn’t really sound all that bad. It sounds silly, like something a child would say.” We both laughed. She was correct.
“Cracker” when exchanged from a black to a white does not pack the same punch as when a white calls a black a nigger, or when John McCain calls a Vietnamese a “gook.” But I am not going to feign ignorance. I’ve spent many years partially squandering an expensive education, but will not on this day! I was taught to understand and experience language. All words, even goofy sounding ones like peckerwood, honky, and whitey, carry meaning. Along with histories. And the potential to scar.
My brother has a lovely son. He is a magnetic little guy of six years. Though not his biological child, my brother has been coparenting him since he was a baby. I am his aunt and I love him dearly. Earlier today my brother complimented me on my blog, it was funny he said. He added, “But I don’t like the word cracker.” He continued, “I would just hate for anyone to call my son that.” As would I.
By no means an attempt to apologize for myself or to bow to certain apolitical tendencies, I nonetheless offered, “There are a number of words I use often that I wouldn’t want my kids to be called.” Bitch, cunt, stupid all come to mind. But cracker, of course, is different. It speaks to a specific race of people and class. In its original inception it was used for upper class whites in the South to distinguish themselves from lower class whites. In Gone with the Wind, for example, the Slatterys are the resident crackers. Mitchell not only depicts them as lazy and promiscuous, but also as carriers of disease. Tellingly, Ellen O’Hara, the author’s pristine vision of Southern womanhood and Starlet’s mother, contracts typhoid fever in the Slattery’s home. She’d been there late into the night helping Emma Slattery deliver yet another illegitimate child. The Ewells, as Malcolm Gladwell reminds us in a recent New Yorker piece, were Harper Lee’s crackers. Though, much more generous to blacks than fellow Southern lady Mitchell, Lee was every bit as disdainful of very poor whites. The incest, the dirt, the argument for eugenics are all still there. My crackers, I must say, are more varied.
As I’ve stated in a previous post, the inspiration from this blog did come from Vicky MacArthur, the Mississippi woman from the free clinic. She, along with every other seemingly working class person attempting to block healthcare reform (to say nothing of those other Americans Bill Clinton flippantly referred to as “the cracker vote” — takes one to know one, I guess) have long been a thorn in my side. For me, they represent a population that refuses to fight the good fight, continually. I had had enough. And so I went to tumblr. In an ichat I wrote to one of my closet friends, “I have an idea to do a blog that is potentially classist.” He said he would totally read it. And here you have it.
But no one can say Ice T’s better half has anything to do with these stubborn and vocal, guns and god loving Americans. Indeed, it is not only about them. An entire blog about them would not be much fun at all. Coco is included for her pregnant performance of white trash. She and her husband, but especially her, are fascinating to watch. Together they illuminate race, sexuality, love and power in a way that no university class on the subject ever could. She is a public cracker, a black man’s wife, a black man’s whore. That is the point. It is delicious—indeed a fuller post on Coco is in order. I include her now in this discussion only to make clear that for me “cracker” does not have a singular definition. Oxford educated Mayor of London Boris Johnson is a cracker, as was King Leopold of Belgium. The same is true for the cast of Bravo’s NYC Prep and every working black conservative pundit. Come to think of it, I am sure I wanted to scream “cracker!” at the screen while watching Gloria Steinmen’s embarrassed performance on Amy Goodman during the election (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQkzgr8kXDc). While, admittedly, there is plenty of room to argue about Ms. Steinem (she has done good things), there is no question in my mind whatsoever as to whether or not Geraldine Ferrero is a cracker.
So then what is it I look for in a cracker? I am exactly sure, nor do I believe I should be.
For example, while showering today I grappled with whether or not Carl Van Vechten was a cracker. I had to consider this in light of Nigger Heaven being a potential predecessor to this very blog. (Editor’s note: I am very exciting.) No, I don’t think he was. His patronage of the Harlem Renaissance and all those wonderful pictures he took should be enough to earn him a Black American knighthood. But I don’t know…
More later. I welcome your thoughts.
