Into the shadows
Skewed statistics might cause outsiders to assume the worst about Kansas
Rebecca Bauman
Issue date: 5/8/08 Section: Opinion
I always had faith in Kansas. But maybe I'd just bought into the clichés, the idea of the homey heartland chock full of salt-of-the-earth types, tall green grass, chicken hawks, coyote and a night sky that could swallow a person whole.
When I told folks back home in St. Louis that I was going to be moving west to Kansas, barely crossing the state line between what was then my home and my home-to-be, a slight pallor would cross their faces.
"What on earth are you gonna do out in Kansas?"
"Kansas? Really, Kansas?"
"You poor thing."
Maybe it was that we were all so fed up with the Midwest, and maybe Kansas seemed even more like the folksy farmland we thought we came to know in our Superman comic books and our VHS copies of the Wizard of Oz.
But I soon discovered that those who'd only ever driven through or around Kansas weren't really afraid of twisters or bored by the landscape. What people didn't like ... were the crackers.
Of course, that was their word, not mine. I didn't understand the concept of the "cracker."
"Why cracker?" I asked a kid in my Latin class.
"Because we're all white, we're all dull and we're all the same."
I wanted to ask what he meant by all this "we" stuff. I didn't think of myself as a cracker. I was Jewish. I was a minority. I was raised in a desegregated school, 43 nationalities represented. How could I, a cosmopolitan sort of nerd, be "a cracker?"
Ironically, my mother, a member of the Anti-Defamation League and a civil-rights activist, was the one who eventually explained it to me.
"They don't call us 'crackers' because we look alike," she said. "Cracker refers to the sound a whip makes on someone else's back. A 'cracker' is a slave driver."
My heart sank. Cracker not only turned out to be a sorrier kind of slur, but one that identified an entire race with continued oppression. I was going to be living among "oppressors," among "uneducated, backwater hicks," among racists and fanatics and Fred Friggin' Phelps.
When I told folks back home in St. Louis that I was going to be moving west to Kansas, barely crossing the state line between what was then my home and my home-to-be, a slight pallor would cross their faces.
"What on earth are you gonna do out in Kansas?"
"Kansas? Really, Kansas?"
"You poor thing."
Maybe it was that we were all so fed up with the Midwest, and maybe Kansas seemed even more like the folksy farmland we thought we came to know in our Superman comic books and our VHS copies of the Wizard of Oz.
But I soon discovered that those who'd only ever driven through or around Kansas weren't really afraid of twisters or bored by the landscape. What people didn't like ... were the crackers.
Of course, that was their word, not mine. I didn't understand the concept of the "cracker."
"Why cracker?" I asked a kid in my Latin class.
"Because we're all white, we're all dull and we're all the same."
I wanted to ask what he meant by all this "we" stuff. I didn't think of myself as a cracker. I was Jewish. I was a minority. I was raised in a desegregated school, 43 nationalities represented. How could I, a cosmopolitan sort of nerd, be "a cracker?"
Ironically, my mother, a member of the Anti-Defamation League and a civil-rights activist, was the one who eventually explained it to me.
"They don't call us 'crackers' because we look alike," she said. "Cracker refers to the sound a whip makes on someone else's back. A 'cracker' is a slave driver."
My heart sank. Cracker not only turned out to be a sorrier kind of slur, but one that identified an entire race with continued oppression. I was going to be living among "oppressors," among "uneducated, backwater hicks," among racists and fanatics and Fred Friggin' Phelps.
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
George Vreeland Hill
posted 5/17/08 @ 7:21 PM CST
Westboro Baptist Church is a hate group.
They hate gays and judge people.
The Bible says not to judge, but these idiots from WBC do so anyway.
The go to the funerals of soldiers and hold up stupid signs that say "Thank God for 9/11", and "God hates fags. (Continued…)
George Vreeland Hill
posted 5/17/08 @ 11:52 PM CST
Westboro Baptist Church is a hate group.
They hate gays and judge people.
The Bible says not to judge, but these idiots from WBC do so anyway.
They go to the funerals of soldiers and hold up stupid signs that say "Thank God for 9/11", and "God hates fags. (Continued…)
old PSUgrad
posted 5/21/08 @ 10:12 PM CST
Just a point of information-the appellation "cracker" does not come from slave drivers or have anything to do with slavery. It most likely comes from the fact that many southerners were of Ulster Scots (Scots Irish) origin, and like to talk. (Continued…)
Post a Comment