Foes of licenses for illegals are "crackers", says Perata
| UPDATE: Perata's office his issued an additional statement. See bottom of post. In a wide-ranging press conference before the final three-week sprint of the Legislature, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, today called residents of southern California who are opposing a bill to provide drivers licenses to illegal immigrants "crackers" and said they "do not have the best interest of this democracy at heart". "Let’s face it, immigration is a red meat issue. You’ve got all these crackers down in southern California…in San Diego taking on the governor," said Perata, presumably referring to a campaign stop Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made in La Mesa last week where he was greeted by a hostile crowd. "Even the governor, the governor was shocked, he says he was embarrassed the other day. I agree with him...there is no sense in falling into or getting into a pitched vocal battle with [these] people." The room reacted in a mixture of gasps and laughs as Perata's staff looked on stunned at the verbal slip. Perata continued by saying that though he has and will continue to vote to provide licenses to undocumented immigrants, it is not an issue he plans to push this year. "I think the bill on its merits should be passed into law. That is different from the political slant...my responsibility is to look at all things—including, in an election year, the political climate," said Perata. "I do not want to give undue advantage in an election to people who I believe do not have the best interest of this democracy at heart. And some of those people I intemperately called crackers fall into that category." The drivers license bill, SB 1160, which is authored by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, is currently in the Assembly after passing out of the Senate in June along a nearly party-line vote of 23-15. The bill passed out of the Assembly transportation committee in June, as well, on a 7-5 vote and currently is before the appropriations committee. "If you start getting engaged with these people, you end up getting tar all over yourself," said Perata. Update: Here is a statement sent out by Perata's office from Perata: Next time I come to Sacramento in August I'll be sure to run the air conditioner. I want to clarify something I said earlier today. While I am concerned about the coarse and divisive tone used by a small minority in the driver's license debate, I believe that the vast majority on both sides are people of good will. |
posted by Shane Goldmacher at 1:52 PM
Comments on "Foes of licenses for illegals are "crackers", says Perata"
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Anonymous said ... (4:28 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (4:08 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (8:13 PM) :
post a commentI don't know if "cracker" is accurate. There's more than one color to the cracker family, what with Ritz, Cheeze-its, Wheat Thins, etc. It would have been more accurate to describe them as "saltines" or perhaps "oyster crackers".
Crackers
The epithet cracker has been applied in a derogatory way, like redneck, to rural, non-elite white southerners,
Crackers
more specifically to those of south Georgia and north Florida. Folk etymology claims the term originated either from their cracking, or pounding, of corn (rather than taking it to mill), or from their use of whips to drive cattle. The latter explanation makes sense, because in piney-woods Georgia and Florida pastoral yeomen did use bullwhips with "cracker" tips to herd cattle.
The true history of the name, however, is more involved and shows a shift in application over time. Linguists now believe the original root to be the Gaelic craic, still used in Ireland (anglicized in spelling to crack) for "entertaining conversation." The English meaning of cracker as a braggart appears by Elizabethan times, as, for example, in Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this . . . that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?"
By the 1760s the English, both at home and in colonial America, were applying the term to Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry,
Crackers
as in this passage from a letter to the earl of Dartmouth: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." The word then came to be associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.
Crackers
Among African Americans cracker became a contemptuous term for a white southerner; among some southern whites it has become a label of ethnic and regional pride, boosted by the election of south Georgian Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976. This led to the coining of the word crackertude as a not entirely serious answer to negritude.
Arnold gonna veto your butt again Perata, coz you ain't nobody.