So You Want to Talk About Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

that it is just as bad as using the word “nigger.” But say both words aloud right now—loudly, which one turns your stomach? That feeling in your gut when you say the word “nigger” loudly and clearly, that is the history of the word being invoked with it as well. Cracker simply does not have that. Cracker does not invoke the mass lynchings of white people, “blacks only” lunch counters, snarling police dogs aimed at white bodies—because that simply did not happen in our history. Cracker has not been a tool of racial oppression against white people, because nobody is or has been racially oppressing white people (note: if this is where you say “what about the Irish” note that the word “cracker” certainly played absolutely no part in the oppression of the Irish, and that oppression was perpetrated by other white people).