Here’s something that has been puzzling me. I mentioned a few posts ago that my infant daughter’s first word was “cracker.” Now, nearly every white person I have told this to has immediately made some joke on the order of, “is she talking about her daddy?” (I am white; my wife and daughter are black). No black people to whom I have told this have had any such reaction. Indeed, my wife, and other black people, have expressed complete puzzlement as to why so many white people would spontaneously make this “joke.” So, my own question is this: why do so many white people seem obsessed with black people supposedly calling white people “crackas” (which they freely interchange with “cracker”)? What kind of strange racial imaginary is behind all this?
A Note on “Cracker”
Here’s something that has been puzzling me. I mentioned a few posts ago that my infant daughter’s first word was “cracker.” Now, nearly every white person I have told this to has immediately made some joke on the order of, “is she talking about her daddy?” (I am white; my wife and daughter are black). No black people to whom I have told this have had any such reaction. Indeed, my wife, and other black people, have expressed complete puzzlement as to why so many white people would spontaneously make this “joke.” So, my own question is this: why do so many white people seem obsessed with black people supposedly calling white people “crackas” (which they freely interchange with “cracker”)? What kind of strange racial imaginary is behind all this?