#400 years

[kemetic-dreams]

In 1830 a newspaper in North Carolina, the Newbern Sentinel, ran an article about an unpublished dictionary, titled The Cracker Dictionary. The work appears to have remained unpublished (perhaps the title had something to do with this), but in reporting on the words contained in the book’s nascent form the article provides early written evidence of a number of 19th century Americanisms. Among these is absquatulate, which is spelled with an initial O, rather than A, and defined as “to mosey, or to abscond.”

In addition to absquatulate, the reader is informed of the meaning of a number of other similar terms, many of which have retained some degree of currency in our language; flustrated (“frustrated and prostrated, greatly agitated”), rip-roarious, (“ripping and tearing”), and fitified (“subject to fits”) have seen enough continued use that we define them in our Unabridged Dictionary. Other words contained in this never-realized dictionary, such as ramsquaddled (“rowed up salt river”) and spontinaceously (“of one’s own accord”) appear to have been lost with the passage of time.

Two of the loafers, we understand, were yesterday taken and committed to prison; the other has absquatulated. — The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), 13 June 1837

Cracker, sometimes cracka or white cracker, is a racial epithet directed towards white people, used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States. Although commonly a pejorative, it is also used in a neutral context, particularly in reference to a native of Florida or Georgia (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker)

The exact history and etymology of the word is debated.

The term is "probably an agent noun  from the word crack. The word crack was later adopted into Gaelic as the word craic meaning a "loud conversation, bragging talk" where this interpretation of the word is still in use in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England today.

The historical derivative of the word craic and its meaning can be seen as far back as the Elizabethan era (1558–1603) where the term crack could be used to refer to "entertaining conversation" (one may be said to "crack" a joke or to be "cracking wise") The word cracker could be used to describe loud braggarts; An example of this can be seen in William Shakespeare's King John (c. 1595) "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?"

The word was later documented describing a group of "Celtic immigrants, Scotch-Irish people who came to America running from political circumstances in the old world". This usage is illustrated in a 1766 letter to the Earl of Dartmouth which reads:

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.

The label followed the Scotch-Irish American immigrants, who were often seen by officials as "unruly and ill-mannered" The use of the word is further demonstrated in official documents, where 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'

By the early 1800s, those immigrants "started to refer to themselves that way as a badge of honor" as is the case with other events of linguistical reappropriation.

The compound corn-cracker was used of poor white farmers (by 1808), especially from Georgia, but also extended to residents of northern Florida, from the cracked kernels of corn which formed a staple food of this class of people. This possibility is given in the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, but the Oxford English Dictionary says a derivation of the 18th-century simplex cracker from the 19th-century compound corn-cracker is doubtful. A "cracker cowboy" with his Florida Cracker Horse and dog by Frederic Remington, 1895

It has been suggested that white slave foremen in the antebellum South were called "crackers" owing to their practice of "cracking the whip" to drive and punish slaves. Whips were also cracked over pack animals, so "cracker" may have referred to whip-cracking more generally. According to An American Glossary (1912):

The whips used by some of these people are called 'crackers', from their having a piece of buckskin at the end. Hence the people who cracked the whips came to be thus named.

Another possibility, which may be a modern folk etymology, supposes that the term derives from "soda cracker", a type of light wheat biscuit which dates in the Southern US to at least the Civil War. The idea has possibly been influenced by "whitebread", a similar term for white people. "Soda cracker" and even "white soda cracker" have become extended versions of "cracker" as an epithet

A 1783 pejorative use of crackers specified men who "descended from convicts that were transported from Great Britain to Virginia at different times, and inherit so much profligacy from their ancestors, that they are the most abandoned set of men on earth".

Benjamin Franklin, in his memoirs (1790), referred to "a race of runnagates and crackers, equally wild and savage as the Indians" who inhabit the "desert[ed] woods and mountains".

In his 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm X used the term "cracker" in reference to white people in a pejorative context. In one passage, he remarked, "It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There's no white man going to tell me anything about my rights."

[temporal-nebula]

[worldwide-blackfolk]

400 years. Time’s up. ⌛️✊🏾🤙🏾

[lucidknight-blog]

EXODUS‬ ‭3‬:‭9‬-‭22‬ ‭

”Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them. Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.” But Moses protested to God, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?” God answered, “I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has…

[its-not-a-pen]

first day as a small-town sherif and you discover that some of the convicts you're transporting managed to escape in the night and since the penalty for letting prisoners escape is death, and the penalty for being late because you were looking for escaped prisoners is also death, you decide to free ALL of them and go hide out in the wilderness for a bit, except the convicts are super grateful so they make you their leader and it turns out they're decent guys who were exploited by a tyrannical government, so long story short you're crowd-sourcing for a peasant uprising and would anyone like to chip in?

3650th day and due to a series of unforeseen events you are now the emperor and founder of the han dynasty.

[humans-are-tasty]

my spread for @opdilfzine

[emirrea]

Imagine if Furina decided to travel the world one day and Neuvillette just starts writing strongly-worded letters to the archons like:

"Dear [insert archon], let it be known, that if anything were to befall Furina de Fontaine while she is travelling on your land, your judgement day shall be rescheduled 200 years earlier."

[egophiliac]

oh, uh, this...this isn't Silver's backstory after all.

[icarusredwings]

Thinking about Logan forgetting that he IS infact gay sometimes. This man was born in the 1800s and has been in toxic masculine places for a very long time. Is the army pretty gay? Yes. But you aren't allowed to admit it or say it.

Logan: Why the fuck am I on the pride months staff member list? *shakes around paper*

Jubilee: *Blinks* ..... ??

Logan: *Crosses arms* Does it look like I'm gay!?

Jubilee: *slowly reaches for phone* Mr. Howlett Please come to the events organizer office

Logan: ?? Im right here.

Wade: *shows up* You called, Firefly? Oh hi pumpkin!

Jubilee: *Gestures to Wade* Is this not your husband?

Logan: And?

Wade: Ohhh is this about the thing in the closet? Look I swear I locked it!!

Jubilee: Im going to have Jean erase my memory of you ever saying that. Logan.... Is that your husband?

Logan: Yes??

Jubilee: Then you're gay.

Logan: No, im not!

Wade: YEAH!! He's bisexual.

Jubilee: Logan... Do you like men?

Logan: No! What do I look like a southern pansy?

Wade: YEA- wait.... what??

Wade and Jubilee: Should... should we tell him?

[balleater]

it's pretty funny actually how ludinus uses his age as proof that he knows what he's talking about when the bright queen is older than him by at least a few centuries and that doesn't seem to change the fact he has absolutely no respect for her and her experiences

[crunchycrystals]

this makes me want to cry

[obsob]

making and weaving and loving! like we have done for millennia!!

[kenmalovebot]

am i my history i have endured?

[alysscoven]

most normal siblings

[disaster-vampires]

can he stop looking like a painting for TWO SECONDS?!?!

[spicykellybear]

and they were coworkers that got married