before the existence of modern farming machinery, cotton and sugar were so labor-intensive it was not economically viable to farm them without slavery. Some people tried, but they were definitely outliers, and when they did they still called it “N-word Work”. That’s why when you have black skin, some people will insist that your natural place is in the cotton fields, no matter how rich your family, even if you’ve never even seen a cotton field yourself. So the expression “cotton picking hands”, when used by somebody who is actually aware of what it means literally, is racist and classist.

All racist terms are classist. The main assumption of racism is that classes should be determined by skin color, because certain races have a natural place at the bottom of the economic ladder.