By James Strong
Two remarks, recently, show how bitter sensitivities about race are in American society. Like lighter fluid, they fueled a controversy as old as humanity.
In an August 2013 interview with The Daily Beast, Rep. Charles Rangel, the venerable 84-year-old Congressman from New York, known for his acid tongue and outspokenness, called Tea Party movement followers “white crackers.”
In November 2014, commenting on the fire that ignited after that characterization, Rangel told Marc lamont Hill, host of the talk show HuffPost Live, “I thought [cracker] was a term of endearment. [The Tea Party is] so proud of their heritage and all of the things they believe in.” Later, during the interview, Rangel offered “a reluctant apology for offending anyone with the derogatory term.”
Then, also in November, Vinita Hegwood, a high school English teacher at Duncanville High School near Dallas, Texas, sent tweets from her personal Twitter account regarding the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and supporting the protests there.
Hegwood began receiving racist responses to her tweets, and she responded with tweets such as this: “Who the (expletive) made you dumb (expletive) crackers think I give a squat (expletive) about your opinions. #Ferguson Kill yourselves.” Later, she tweeted to someone else, “You exhibit nigga behavior, I’m a call you a nigga. You acting crackerish, I’m a call you a cracker.”
Subliminally, beneath the skin of these two incidences lies a molecule of hope that may never advance. Calling a white “cracka” is still the tale of Black America’s never-ending fight for future days, days when such language becomes an allergy if aligned with respect.
In the meantime, we must deal with reality, and we can see three reasons why Blacks have the right, like Rangel and Hegwood, to use the word cracka.
First, in a country bar in the South, say in Birmingham, Alabama, with country music blaring in the background, it’s not unusual during a bar fight for one of the white guys, just before throwing a bottle of Heineken beer at the other, to yell, ”I’m gonna crack your head with this bottle, cracka!”
Moreover, some well-known white comedians, such as Jeff Foxworthy, employ cracka jokes, as well as honky and redneck jokes, in their routines regularly. And white rapper Eminem has been known to call whites in his audience during concerts crackas.
So if whites are not offended at calling themselves crackas, why should Blacks be denied the right to call them crackas too?
Second, you can use the term cracka in various senses. For example, you can use cracka to refer to all whites, if you want to use it as a racial slur. You can use the term to insult whites, if you are vengeful or want to be funny.
And when walking down the street, you see a filthy white drunk lying next to a dumpster or a skinny white prostitute dizzy from snorting coke, instead of yelling “Get the hell outta here, you po’ white trash!”, you can demean them more kindly with “Get outta here, cracka!”
Third, some whites would not dare call a Black waitress in a Starbucks nigga to her face or call a Black police office “nigga cop” as he writes a traffic ticket. But in their apartments, while watching “Scandal” on TV with their friends or dancing at a night club frequented mostly by whites, “nigga” slithers easily from their throats, like slime.
Blacks, on the other hand, are slammed whether they call whites crackas while eating candy brittle in a closet or sitting on a cot in a motel. Those whites don’t want Blacks to experience the same privileges they have, though they have no problem dismissing Blacks as their equals in other ways.
Instead of seeking common ground with Blacks by sharing disgust for all forms of racism, they consider themselves friendly when they call Blacks niggas behind their backs. That’s why it’s so hypocritical to criticize Blacks for calling whites crackas.
Of course, some whites, and a few Blacks, might disagree with the pro-cracka argument. As such, as there are always two sides to the same coin, each reason mentioned above for Blacks calling whites crackas has a counter-argument. Some might construe the first reason as the fallacy of illicit process, because it assumes that acceptance of the term cracka by some whites means it’s acceptable to all whites.
Some might consider the second reason an example of the fallacy of equivocation, because several definitions or senses of cracka are provided that don’t seem to justify the use of the term. And others might see the third reason as an instance of faulty generalization, just because some whites show their racism in private.
Regardless, the argument as to whether Blacks have the right to call whites crackas rests on perspective.
If many whites refer to Blacks as niggas, why can’t Blacks refer to whites as crackas? If many whites are not offended at calling themselves crackas, why should Blacks be offended at calling them crackas?
Furthermore, if whites use the term cracka to refer to other whites, it’s okay. But if Blacks use the term to refer to whites, it’s not okay? What’s up with that?
Then, there’s this hard, concrete truth given by some whites: Just because Blacks may want to call each other niggas doesn’t mean we want Blacks to call us crackas.
As you can see, the language of racial slurs is the language of races at war. Polite language dies first, then courtesy bleeds to death from worry. And that’s why perspective is the heart of this conflict over the use of the word cracka.
What can we conclude? Well, squirrels don’t care whether the nuts they eat are cashews or almonds. Neither should Blacks about the term cracka, when properly used.
Copyright © 2014 by James Strong. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of this column, or any part of this column, without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Send your comments to strongpoints123@gmail.com.
