How bad are the words "honky" and "cracker"?

You may have noticed or remember that during the presentation of the Zimmerman case, someone on Zimmerman's side mad a bid deal about Trayvon's having used the word "cracker." It was treated seriously in the court room and I assume the record that this word as just as bad as the n-word and that Trayvon was just as bad as a white n-word user. It is also sometime argued that the use of the work that begins with "honk" is also just as bad as the n-word. (I am avoid saying any of the words involved because a friend of mine seems to have be censored by Facebook and had his comment on this subject deleted.)

This is ignorant, wrong, and absurd.

The n-word has layers of meaning, history, usage, semantics, and a thousand other differences from the Nabisco and horn-tooting words for white people. I am a professional linguist with Ph.D. in the field, and I know what I am talking about.

The H-word comes from a Wolof (a West African language that was the language of thousands and thousands of slaves) a Wolof word that sounds like "honkie" and is translated as "pink people." English speakers who overheard the speakers assumed they were calling white people that word because of the similarity in sound. They never dreamed the Africans had full, rich, beautiful languages of their own which they brought with them when they were forced into the Middle Passage. The earliest users were just speaking their own language.

And the Cookie word, well that's used in scholarship, drawing a distinction between the Scots-Irish Southern culture and the Northern British "Yankee" culture. See historian Grady McWhiney's scholarly study in book available from Amazon and most other bookstores called "Cracker Culture." It's not flattering, but it does not designate lynchees.

 The censors are uneducated idiots throwing their weight around and flaunting their power.

In order to have freedom and democracy, it is necessary that there be enough people who are well-educated and well-informed to pull against the weight of the ignorant citizens. We've got to know our history, man, or we will lose our future.

Cracker Culture  by Grady McWhiney

origin of "honky"

Yesterday I had a senior moment and gave Forest McDonald as the author of the book Cracker Culture. This is incorrect. The book's author is actually Grady McWhiney. I hope I have corrected this in the text above and I offer you my sincere apologies. It is still correct that it is a fascinating book!