Comment Re:Ok, How did the black participants respond? (Score 1) 251
a common insult for an obnoxious bloviator.
What part of that is not disparaging? In fact what hilariously left out of your quotes...
"It's a beautiful quote, but it was a character trait that was used to describe a group of Celtic immigrants — Scots-Irish people who came to the Americas who were running from political circumstances in the old world," Ste. Claire said. Those Scots-Irish folks started settling the Carolinas, and later moved deeper South and into Florida and Georgia.
But the disparaging term followed these immigrants , who were thought by local officials to be unruly and ill-mannered.
"In official documents, the governor of Florida said, 'We don't know what to do with these crackers — we tell them to settle this area and they don't; we tell them not to settle this area and they do," Ste. Claire said. "They lived off the land. They were rogues."
Those people used the term AFTER it was being used to insult them. They chose to try and appropriate the term to offset the insult. Kind of like owning an embarrassing nickname in school. Besides, Celts (Scots-Irish) = white people. They are Caucasian, yes. But not all white people are Celts.
The article in no way supports what you said.
You should look up the history of the term cracker before assuming that it is a disparaging remark.
When blacks use it, it means a bigoted white person; comparing the whites they're interacting with to the whites they dealt with during slavery. When a WASP uses it, it's meant to disparage Scots-Irish migrants to this country. When a Northerner uses it, it's comparing the person to oppressive slave owners.
Further, and this is really what matters, as person with Irish heritage, if someone called me a cracker, I'd find it offensive. I'm neither bigoted (or rather I don't try to be); I'm not unruly and ill-mannered; I've never been a slave owner; and no ancestors that I know of have either. More importantly, if I am, it's not because I'm white or of Irish descent.