Her sociology is good, too. I learned a lot about the structure of the Old South. The word “cracker,” for example, which some deluded white people nowadays are trying to argue is as offensive as the fabulous n-word—as if white people are allowed to take offense at anything!—was socially quite specific. (…)
Speaking of the n-word, the custom that blacks may use it freely but well-bred whites shouldn’t use it at all seems to go well back before the Civil War, in the South at least.
