Is this offensive?

Marxist said:
Hey Uncle Cracker,

...I'd love to live in a world where people judged me on the content of my character rather than the color of my skin but it just doesn't work that way.
You have the audacity to call someone a cracker and then speak of a world where people judge others on the content of their character instead of a stereotype?!
 
Mischka said:
You have the audacity to call someone a cracker and then speak of a world where people judge others on the content of their character instead of a stereotype?!
Wow- I totally missed that- definitely not cool Marxist. You just negated any validity to your personal arguments.
 
not offended by your idea

Lilminx,

I'd have been happy to do that type of homework with the munchykins. I have the opposite problem...one of the munchy's is blonde haired and blue eyed. People think I've made a mistake when I mark the "Hispanic" box on all those lovely forms they send you at the beginning of the year. *sigh*

Keep teaching with innovation and imagination. Your students will remember you for it. Those parents who have issues...you will be able to forget easily.
 
Thanks Earthmuffin :)
Teaching in NYC, I see kids of all ethnicities, and I have to say that many don't look like the stereotype of their ethnic origin. I've had plenty of Hispanic kids with blonde hair and/or blue eyes, white kids darker than Hispanic and Black kids, etc... it's taught me not to assume anything when it comes to race and culture, which I think is a good thing. :)
 
I have no argument with much of what's been said on this board. Individualism--yes. Excuses--no. Women have been treated like shit--yes. Should people recognize their ancestry--yes. My only argument so far has been that I don't care if someone disagreed with an assignment and that it fell upon a racial divide. They're ignorant but I don't shed a tear for those they offend because they aren't being necessarily racist just reactionary. Sort of like that whole "niggardly" argument a year or two ago. Many American Negroes (and a lot of people in general) thought it was an insult; I thought it was hilarious that they thought so.

If everyone is paying so much attention to my screed then they should note my use of the term American Negro. That's because through the American Negro almost all "American" races flow. We are part everything and don't give me that shit about your grandma was a Cherokee. During the 19th century when it wasn't hip to be Indian or Negro everyone that could pass as White did. Those that couldn't were lumped together and intermarried. That's why you have to go to special places like coastal Carolina to find what many of my ancestors looked and sounded like upon arrival in America.

Uncle Cracker, that's really harsh. I think there's a recording artist by that name.

My point, was to taunt, challenge, cajole, inflame, whatever, the silly spew that comes from the Boortz informed Unclebill on a regular basis.

I don't know UncleBill personally and I don't know if he is a poor white person from my neck of the woods. I do know that he is "noisy" and a "swaggering fellow". Hence "Cracker" or as they say down here "Cracka".

A similar term was used for a Negro League team by the name of the Atlanta Black Crackers. That's a strange contradiction, no?

And if you think cracker is so goddamn harsh and destroys any argument of mine, then you're not only a poor student of history but a sad wordsmith.
 
lilminx said:

Wow- I totally missed that- definitely not cool Marxist. You just negated any validity to your personal arguments.

Okay, I didn't miss it. But I guess I didn't understand it, either. Anyone want to tell me what a "cracker" is? I take it that it is an insult?
 
I like words, both good and bad, that's why I write. Sand nigger lacks imagination, but does denote a condition of subhuman disdain. Nigger is very powerful and perjorative, but has a certain warmth when said with affection. I don't know anything about kike but I think hymie has had a certain ring ever since J. Jackson called NY "Hymie Town". I still don't know what either of those words mean. Help?

Celestial, I ain't scared and neither should you be. Think about a little kid babbling nasty words. He's testing the waters, looking for quick scan of recognition, trying to provoke, looking for reaction. Without reaction dirty words have little meaning.

You have peered outside the bulletin board at the rest of the site haven't you? Chock full of dirty words, God love 'em!
 
Cheyenne said:
Anyone want to tell me what a "cracker" is? I take it that it is an insult?

Well, yeah. Kinda. It's one of those words that's not offensive if used by the in-group to describe other members of the group, but it's a pejorative if used by an outsider (like the way "nigger" is offensive to blacks, but only if uttered by a non-black).

Cracker is just another slang word for a poor lower-class, usually rural Southerner - basically a redneck farmer.
 
Cracker is a derogatory name for a white man. It supposedly comes from a slave owner "cracking" the whip.

Maybe marxist knows.
 
miles said:
Cracker is a derogatory name for a white man. It supposedly comes from a slave owner "cracking" the whip.

Maybe marxist knows.

Ok Miles, I think I've had enough of your white sheet badgering. Making up def. to fit your politics? If you're not a klan member then maybe you should call your mom for an application.
 
Ok Miles, I think I've had enough of your white sheet badgering. Making up def. to fit your politics? If you're not a klan member then maybe you should call your mom for an application.


You do an uncanny imitation of shadowsource. Truly amazing.
 
*turning to address Celestial because she's interesting and smart*

A Cracker is someone who is loud, offensive, brash, a braggart. It comes into popular usage from the teamsters who were portrayed as such. Hence, the first Atlanta baseball team was called The Crackers. The Black Crackers were a Negro League team that used the old uniforms of the Atl. Crackers.

If the term meant slave driver, why would they have named their team so?

Miles, you're from Atl. right? Must be a transplant.

I meant no offense to dear Unclebill, I simply applied his Boortzian manner and the name of a popular recording artist.

So sorry so sorry sorry.
 
XXplorher said:
(Except for the children/adult thing. It's ALSO the child's responsibility to distinguish for themselves. THAT falls in line with the rest of your point, no? (Is it more difficult to do that when your adult example fails at it? Possibly. Or possibly far easier. Depends on the child, eh? A parents job is to enable education and 'thinking'. However, a child can't be soley dependant on that. There are plenty of other sources for them to find the mix that suits them.)
I acknowledge your point but offer the addition that because of the special relationship, i. E., the virtually complete trust of a child for the parent and the virtually incomprehensible idea that the child's parent would tell them anything wrong or erroneous, it makes the process of recovery from an irrational indoctrination more challenging.

In my case, I learned some of the racial bias and prejudice of the deep south (my parents were from Alabama and Georgia) growing up in Florida. From my interaction with other kids, it became apparent that not everyone shared the same beliefs I was learning. As a result, I did not adhere to these beliefs as strongly as many did but I still had to deal with the idea that my mother would teach me something that was wrong.

In my young adulthood, my self-education in philosophy showed me that in fact she had. I recognize it in retrospect as merely the product of her upbringing but my children never learned (at least not from their parents) the racial biases and prejudices. I always stressed that they should judge people on the basis of their individual merits alone.

Marxist[/i] [B]Guy JD and the rest make their point ever more clear. They HATE Black leaders but want to believe the point of an African American teacher that they don't know or have never met. Here's a clue guys said:
Okay, I didn't miss it. But I guess I didn't understand it, either. Anyone want to tell me what a "cracker" is? I take it that it is an insult?

I think definition 3 [The American Heritage Dictionary ©1994] will suffice for what you're asking. It's essentially a synonym for redneck. [Pardon the odd looking format of the definition. The diacritical markings from the electronic dictionary do not translate well into HTML.]

crack·er (kr²k"…r) n. 1. A thin, crisp wafer or biscuit, usually made of unsweetened dough. 2. One that cracks, especially: a. A firecracker. b. A small cardboard cylinder covered with decorative paper that holds candy or a party favor and pops when a paper strip is pulled at one or both ends and torn. c. The apparatus used in the cracking of petroleum. d. One who makes unauthorized use of a computer, especially to tamper with data or programs. 3. Offensive. Used as a disparaging term for a poor white person of the rural, especially southeast United States.
 
Unclebill said:

I know the name Boortz from this BB because Todd is purported to have quoted him on occasion. And that's the extent of my knowledge. I've also heard he's a radio personality but can't confirm that. So as to identifying my sources, you might find you're overstepping your area of expertise.


Neil Boortz is an author, nationally syndicated talk show host, and the fill-in host on CNN's Talk Back Live. He is the most visible proponent of your Libertarian cause. No, I guess you wouldn't have had the chance to hear of him but you'd probably agree. I believe you can tune him in on http://www.Boortz.com. It's what you sound like orally

About the Cracker thing I'm sorry. I was trying to amuse myself at your expense with a silly word game. If I offended, I apologize.
 
Going back to Minx first statement I find it a horrid shame when people refuse to acknowledge their culture and express their pride in knowing where they came from. I do not know about anyone else here put I take specifc empahis on the fact that I am not just African American, I am also West Indian American. I do not know how I would live if I did not have my culture because it is as much a part of me as my skin color and my personality
 
Phoenix said:
Going back to Minx first statement I find it a horrid shame when people refuse to acknowledge their culture and express their pride in knowing where they came from. I do not know about anyone else here put I take specifc empahis on the fact that I am not just African American, I am also West Indian American. I do not know how I would live if I did not have my culture because it is as much a part of me as my skin color and my personality

How dare you hijack this thread with cogent analysis. Go away, I was enjoying being the only openly Negroid character and getting attacked for keeping it real.
 
Phoenix said:
Going back to Minx first statement I find it a horrid shame when people refuse to acknowledge their culture and express their pride in knowing where they came from. ... I do not know how I would live if I did not have my culture because it is as much a part of me as my skin color and my personality
This is a mentality that I cannot grasp. While your genetic heritage may provide certain intellectual and physical potentials, they are nothing more than potential until and unless you put this potential to use. The motivation and determination and persistence to initiate, sustain and succeed is yours and yours alone. You either do or you don't achieve the physical or intellectual ends supported by whatever potential your genetic history has given you.

While your upbringing may orient you to a greater or lesser degree to succeed, it does not in and of itself provide the motivation and determination. That you must provide.

I do not denigrate a desire to know of one's heritage. I just do not give the credence that it is the primary reason one should live and succeed and I cannot understand the mentality that accepts that idea.

While it may not intended as such, the literal implication of your statement is that without knowledge of your heritage, you would have no incentive to continue living. That I find truly irrational and quite sad.

Your life is yours and is an end in itself as pronounced in the Declaration of Independence (unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). I can only marvel that you seem to see life as so worthless and depressing that the only thing making it worth living is knowledge of your ancestry (such is the implication of your statement).

From my perspective, the accident of my heritage is merely a fact of history. While it provides me certain potentials for success, it does not provide the measure of my achievements. That is entirely the product of my endeavors in life and knowledge of that history is essentially irrelevant to any success I achieve.
 
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