cracker

The popular folk etymology is based on slaver foremen using bullwhips to discipline African slaves, and the sound the whip being described as 'cracking the whip'. The foremen who cracked these whips were thus known as crackers.

According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "cracker" is a term of contempt for the "poor" or "mean whites," particularly of Georgia and Florida. Britannica notes that the term dates back to the American Revolution, and is derived from the "cracked corn" which formed their staple food. (Note that in British English "mean" is a term for poverty, not malice.)

In John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, Lewis, played by Burt Reynolds, derisively refers to the rural people they encounter as being "crackers", implying that they were slow-witted hillbillies who lived in a world much different from that of him and his friends from a southern city.

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