[moocow]

the reason why racial slurs are bad is that they carry behind them the weight of all the various kinds of violence that have been perpetrated in the interest of upholding white supremacy. you can call cracker a racial slur if you want but it broadens the meaning so much as to make it completely useless.

for a brief history lesson to help build some context around the word "cracker" being used to refer to white people in america specifically- the term comes from the sounds the whips made when cracked against the skin of enslaved individuals, the slave masters were referred to by many slang terms and "cracker" is one of those terms, again because of the sounds the whips made when used against enslaved individuals. personally, i dont consider it to be derogatory as they were used to refer to people in the position of power and not as a way of dehumanizing an entire group of people solely based off of their skin tone and appearance.