What is the origin of the word "cracker" as used to refer to white people? I was told that it originally referred to the slave charged with "cracking the whip" in the field, and/or meting out punishment, typically via a whip; but handing a slave a weapon seems unlikely to me.
EDIT
When did that usage start appearing in written/recorded language? Did use by a marginalized group to demean the majority group affect this entry?
As with every word etymology question, I like to start off by checking with the Oxford English Dictionary.
their entry for 'cracker' includes sense 2 "a liar" common from the 16th to 18th centuries, and sense 3 "a lie". Their fourth entry for the word is the one that pertains to poor whites in North America.
Quoting the first cited text, from 1766, it says:
1766 G. Cochrane Let. 27 June (D.A.) 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.
later examples like this one:
1772 J. Habersham Lett. (1904) 204 Persons who..live by hunting and plundering the industrious Setlers... The people I refer to are really what you and I understand by Crackers.
and this one
1784 London Chron. No. 4287 Maryland, the back settlements of which colony had since the peace been greatly disturbed by the inroads of that hardy banditti well known by the name of Crackers.
make it clear that in 18th century understandings, the term referred to very poor, illiterate, recent immigrants, who were seen as a threat to the plantation order. Thus, an origin connected to their being overseers who would 'crack the whip' to keep order in plantations seems extremely unlikely.
In fact, the earliest conflation of 'cracker' with the pop of a whip comes a century later:
1887 Beacon (Boston) 11 June The word Cracker..is supposed to have been suggested by their cracking whips over oxen or mules in taking their cotton to the market.
In my opinion, the the Boston Beacon etymology is likely a false one invented later to explain the term when the sense of cracker as "a liar" fell out of common parlance.
OED also tentatively offers that it might come from corn-cracker, although earliest print entries for that term come almost 70 years after the G Cochrane letter.
It's worth noting that Cracker is perceived differently in different parts of the south. This is due in part to a possible separate entomology depending on region. For example, in Florida the term cracker was used to describe the Spanish cowboys who ran cattle from the city of Cowford (Now Jacksonville) North to the Georgia colony. The small crops they used to whip the cattle earned them this name. Consequently,the term cracker carries a positive denotation in the area. One example would be during a gubernatorial debate between sitting governor Lawton Chiles and then candidate Jeb Bush. Bush announced he had a message for Spanish speaking citizens of the state, and the delivered this message in Spanish, in which he is fluent. Chiles retorted "If I may kindly reply in Cracker" to the sound of much laughter. He went on to win that election. It would not be surprising that cracker has multiple entomology's dependent on region, and the OED is accurate, to some degree, in all its definitions.