Ya know, at 65 years old, I feel like a real dimwit! I never heard

the term cracker, or uppity before. I had to google cracker because I only knew a cracker to be a Ritz or a saltine. I never associated the word uppity with any race! To me Uppity was a rich bitch. I was born in western Pa and moved to the south in 1987, and I swear to you, this is the fisrt time I've ever heard those terms axxociated with race!

that's where I learned the loaded nature of those terms. Here in California they're not used much, so I don't believe I've ever heard them in daily conversation. I have read them often, however, both in literature and different social commentaries.

Georgia Cracker?

Wow, that is amazing.

To this day, the only time I've ever even read them was on DU!

from here on out.

They are used frequently in the South, especially GA.

you are either VERY naive or VERY lucky :hi:

but then again, racists can be very creative in their slurs

Most of what I've heard wasn't a slur!!! I grew up with hearing the "N" used all the time!

I never recognized that sh*t and have alway been friends with people I met and worked with.

The one that really amuses me is the cracker. I can't ever think of anything but a Ritz!

Chef on South Park calls the kids that

and I'm from the northern part of WV originally-couple hours from Pittsburgh

but I have heard the term uppity used against African-Americans

Which isn't to say that it isn't possible.

with George Jefferson?

Remember when the Jefferson's moved next door. 1st black family in the neighborhood? You had the prejudice white guy fighting with the prejudice black guy and their wives were like best friends.

about upity or cracker.

...and I was 10 or 11 at the time.

I can even recall the episode, if you want me to refresh your memory.

but it does not mean I saw every episode or would remember every reference made to things I didn't understand.

I remember an episode where Sally had a miscarriage. I remember an episode where Archie argued with the meathead about how he put his socks on and another one where Archie described an event and the meathead described an event and then Edith did and both of them were exxagerating or seeing stereotypes.

I even watched many episodes of the Jeffersons and don't remember either cracker or uppity. Cracker was new to me until I saw "Remember the Titans" on TV a couple of years ago or "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" except even in that one I was not clear what Nat X was talking about.

So I kinda agree with the OP and could have written it myself three years ago.

<<where Archie described an event and the meathead described an event and then Edith did and both of them were exxagerating or seeing stereotypes.<<

I'm not saying that the OP needs to be able to recall entire scripts, or remember every episode from 1971 to whenever All in the Family went off the air, or morphed into Archie's Place, or whatever. But there were just some themes and language so pervasive across the entire run of AitF that to claim they don't remember...maybe, but like a lot here, I see it as a bit disingenuous.

But, okay, I'll give the OP the benefit of the doubt.

Where do you live?


I've heard it in the northeast, but I now live in Texas and don't remember hearing it here.

San Antonio, Tx in 1992, and to Ga. in 2000. Still here in Ga. I guess there are people here who don't believe me, but I swear, I never heard those terms until this years election, and I had to google cracker to see what they were talking about.

... and I have no idea how anyone my age could NOT have heard those terms many, many times. Convent? Agoraphobia? Beats me.

Anyone who has ever spent even a brief part of his/her life reading anything beyond escape fiction, Reader's Digest, and the TV Guide has run into those terms time after time after time since at least 7th, 8th, 9th grade, if not earlier.

I'm from MT, we don't have many black people there, especially in my hometown which is only a few thousand people. Nobody really says "cracker" either. Most slurs are between white people and Indians. I have heard the N word used before a few times. Generically though, very few people have really been around black people for any length of time.

What in the world is wrong with the word "uppity?" I was raised in Illinois and I don't think I ever heard the word. In my book just thinking about it, it would mean thinking you might be a little better than someone else. HOW IN THE WORLD COULD THE WORD "UPPITY" BE A RACIAL THING??????? Who thought of that?

That's how it came to be a racial thing. Buncha good ol' boys would decide to teach some uppity n.... a lesson. And the lesson came with a rope instead of a blackboard.

People, over time, become hyper-sensitive to the excuses used to murder them. I tell you that as a Jew.

My GOD! I swear I never heard that in my life!

I knew about the good ol' boys and how they treated all blacks, but I feel really ignorant now. I really never heard terms like uppity or cracker.

Maybe I don't live in the part of N Ga. that you all think of, but nobody in my neighborhood talks like that!

I expect you just don't run in those circles. And around the time the federal government decided to enforce civil rights laws, people got kinda circumspect in their language too.

Calling a white person "uppity" is just quaint. Saying it about a black one is saying go find a tree with a strong branch ten feet off the ground. It's a code term for the good ol' days.

And I'm glad you never heard it that way. I hope no one does again.

I grew up down here during Jim Crow and heard it constantly.

:rofl:

I'm stealing that line.

If Palin gets elected I'm sure we'll all have our vocabulary expanded.

over the word 'spook.'

A Canadian friend of mine once thought that an elevator full of colleagues resembled G-men or spies because of their uniforms. Unfortunately, they were all African-American and he elected to use the word 'spook.' Big mistake! Despite his pleading he never got the opportunity to apologize to the persons in question or explain that he didn't know that usage of 'spook' before HR explained it to him. There went his career.

That's what I've always thought.

As it turns out.

I think I know them all. But I get this flash of concern I might not know a couple of them.

The offending words should be posted somewhere. I'm series.

I know about "articulate" but I object - it's not fair to someone with good speaking skills to be deprived of that description while it is allowed to whites.

Double-post. It's that hypersensitive touch pad on my computer.

...that you could have lived here for two decades and not heard about "uppity."

We moved here fron Pgh, Pa. in 2000! I've heard the word Uppity in Pgh. but it meant rich, not like you, better than you...things like that! In the 10 years we've lived here, I've Never heard "uppity", "cracker", or "N" even once!

and just don't talk about them.

But in any regular part of PGH racist epithets can be heard as a matter of course. Try the VFW on the southside, for example.

Pa and moved to the south in 1987."

or 21

my first exposure to the KKK! I read about their existance, but I honestly thought they were long gone. those people scared the hell out of me!

We moved to Tx in 1992, back to Pgh in 1999, and to Ga. in 2000.

I must have lived a really sheltered existance, because I also never knew a lot of people in Ga. think all Catholics are cultists!

:shrug: That might explain it. Transplants tend to hang out with other transplants so don't know those words and what they mean. Those in rural areas or "Old South" neighborhoods would very much know what they mean. Although the kids of those parents might not understand it the way the parents do.

but I couldn't figure out why an obama spelled out cris cross on a confederate flag image drew so many alert messages.

I thought it was the penultimate anti racism in a super saracastic way symbol.

Gobama

i grew up in the northeast and uppity meant only one thing. It meant a black person who didn't tow the line to white masters or bosses. This is so pathetic that we have this conversation forty years after the civil rights movement. If the Repukes have thier way, it will still be an issue long after this rediculous election is over. Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin gives a damn about a black person is sadly mistaken. She is a white supremetist in a thin disguise.

:toast:

Jeepers, and all this time I thought Sarah Palin was a socially adept psychopath in thin disguise.

Got that pos Palin pegged. As an uppitty psychopath without a conscience who won't kowtow the the line to her white masters with a conscience.

Ooooth what a thin disguise. How hard is it to see through it.

Rotfflmfo

"Cracker" is an old term for Irish people that sort of carried over into the new world. It means the same as "redneck", "poor white trash" and other assorted terms. My people, in fewer words. lol

In my small town, uppity was a term used to describe Mrs. Simpson, a rich white old lady who looked down her nose at everybody.

though I hear it from really old relatives out in the country these days. My ex father in law said it often.

Ohio, and I have heard it more times than I would have liked.

Yes, the word was followed of course by the "n" word, and the same people that used it called Italians dagos, Polish people dumb, and the few Jewish around where I lived had several adjectives that the intolerant used.

I am 69 years old, born in PA, grew up in Miami, FL and now live in No. Georgia. And I have heard the term "Georgia cracker" or "Florida cracker" ever since I have lived in the South. Yes, and "uppity" was always followed by the "n" word.

I heard the word "uppity" but it was always referring to some rich white snob.

If what you say is true then your life should not be remembered or even discussed. It is truly sad.

I'm not sure how you avoided them for so long. "Uppity" got a lot of play during the Clarence Thomas hearings, were you around for those?

on the nightly news. I remember thinking Oren Hatch was an ass, and I did question Anita, and why she ever would have followed Thomas to a different job if he was as obnoxious as she said. I knew, as a woman who worked every day from age 16, I would never have done that. I actually found out a lot more about those hearings in recent years than I ever heard back then.

I run into stuck up people all the time. :)

I grew up in a smaller city in Canada and the ONLY times I heard uppity was in relation to blacks. And we didn't even have many black people around here growing up (I'm 29, and I heard it before I was 15 years old).

I find it hard to believe you never heard those terms.

and I live in Dallas.

Though I do know about the whole "cracker" thing.

my adult live in NE, WY and SD, and have often heard "uppity" applied to women, and to people of color, who "don't know their place." For women, their "place," according to those who use the word "uppity," is at home being subservient to their "men-folk", and for people of color, it's working at low-paying jobs that require them to be subservient to white people.