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Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable as a pejorative term and common ethnic slur for black people, and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts.
The word originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger, meaning "black". Although criticized for its pejorative meaning since the 1800s, the term remained in general use in much of the world until around the 1960's - 1970s.
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Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable as a pejorative term and common ethnic slur for black people, and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts.
The word originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger, meaning "black". Although criticized for its pejorative meaning since the 1800s, the term remained in general use in much of the world until around the 1960's - 1970s. It retains a place in popular culture and slang, however it is widely considered to be grossly offensive in mainstream English usage.
Etymology and history
Earlier variants (such as neger or negar) derive from the Spanish/Portuguese word , meaning "black", and probably also the French nègre, which has also been used pejoratively (but also positively as in Négritude), derived from negro (the ordinary French word for "black" being noir). Both negro and noir (and therefore also nègre and nigger) ultimately come from nigrum, the accusative form of the Latin word (pronounced , like "knee-ger" with the final r being trilled), simply meaning "black".
In Colonial America, negars was used in 1619 by John Rolfe, describing slaves shipped to Virginia colony. Neger (sometimes spelled "neggar") also prevailed in northern New York under the Dutch and also in Philadelphia, in its Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities. For example, the African Burial Ground in New York City was originally known as "Begraafplaats van de Neger" (Dutch phrase meaning "Cemetery of the negro" in English).
In the United States the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, but was instead used by many as merely denotative of black skin, as it was in other parts of the English-speaking world. In nineteenth-century literature, there are many uses of the word nigger with no intended negative connotation. Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad (who published The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' in 1897) used the word without racist intent. Mark Twain often put the word into the mouths of his characters, white and black, but did not use the word when writing as himself in his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi.
In the United Kingdom and other parts of the English-speaking world, the word was often used to refer to darker skinned peoples colonized by the British Empire, or merely to darker-skinned foreigners in general; in his 1926 Modern English Usage, H. W. Fowler observed that when the word was applied to "others than full or partial negroes," it was "felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least a very arrogant inhumanity." The note was excised from later editions of the book.
In the 1800s, as "nigger" began to acquire pejorative connotations, the term "colored" gained popularity as an alternative to "negro" and associated terms. For example, abolitionists in Boston, Massachusetts posted warnings to "Colored People of Boston and vicinity." The name of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reflects the preference for this term at the time of the NAACP's founding in 1909.
Southern dialect in many parts of the southern United States changes the pronunciation of "Negro" to "nigra" (used most famously by Lyndon B. Johnson, a proponent of civil rights during the later portion of his political career). In the early editions of his dictionary, Noah Webster suggested the new spelling of neger for "Negro".
Black became the preferred term in English in the late 1960s, and this continues to the present day. In the United States this has been displaced to some extent by African American, at least in politically correct usage, though this blanket term does not accurately describe those from other African nations such as Morocco; this resembles the term Afro-American that was in vogue in the early 1970s. Nevertheless, black continues in widespread use as a racial designation in the United States and is rarely regarded as offensive.
Today the word is often spelled nigga or niggah, in imitation of the manner in which some pronounce it. (Less-common variants are nigguh or even nikuh.) Other variations, designed to avoid the term itself, include nookah, reggin, nukka, nagger and the much older "jigger."
Usage
In the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, "nigger" is now established as a derogatory word, but as recently as the 1950s it was widely regarded as acceptable in Britain for black people to be referred to as niggers (indeed, liquorice confectionery "cigarettes" were at that time sold to children bearing the brand name "Nigger Boy"). By the 1970s, these and other terms had become recognised as offensive racial slurs had been outlawed by stricter government legislation.
Historically, British people would often describe a dark shade of brown as "nigger brown". Though this and all other uses of the word "nigger" have long since been considered offensive in Britain, the color term has turned up as recently as 2007, having been placed on a Chinese-made sofa label.
The singer Elvis Costello used the word in his contemporary "state of the world today" song "Oliver's Army" in 1979. In the second verse, about the Berlin Wall - he sang "All it takes is one itchy trigger - One more widow, one less white nigger," referring to those killed by the East German troops for trying to leave East Germany by circumventing the wall. On a later edition of the programme Stars in Their Eyes a contestant sang this song and was forced by the producers to substitute this line as "One more widow, one less white figure."
John Lennon used the word in his song "Woman is the Nigger of the World."
Big Brother 2007 contestant Emily Parr was ejected from the Big Brother house only hours after saying the word "Nigger" in reference to a fellow housemate. Despite making the slur in jest, she was removed due to tighter rules in response to a previous similar situation causing public outcry.
In the United States
In the United States, the word was freely used by most whites and some blacks until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
In the first half of the 20th Century, before Major League Baseball was integrated, ball players with a dark complexion were sometimes nicknamed "Nig." The following major league players bore the nickname: Johnny Beazley (1941–49), Howard Berry (1921–22), Bobby Bragan (1940–48), Nig Clarke (1905–20), Nig Cuppy (1892–1901), Nig Fuller (1902), Johnny Grabowski (1923–
31), Nig Lipscomb (1937), Charlie Niebergall (1921–24), Nig Perrine (1907), and Frank Smith (1904–15). Other nicknames include the word hidden in the anagram "Ginger".
Louisiana Governor Earl Long also used the term when advocating expanded voting rights for African Americans. At that time, the term was less noteworthy than the expressions of support by white Southerners, as it was a common regional term for blacks, along with negro and colored.
Today, the implied racism of the term is so strong that the use of nigger in most situations is a social taboo. Many American magazines and newspapers will not even print the word in full, instead using "n*gg*r", "n*ger", "n——", or "the N-word."
A Washington Post article on Strom Thurmond's 1948 candidacy for President of the United States went so far as to replace it with the periphrasis "the less-refined word for black people."
The shock effect of the word can also be used to deliberately cause offense. Several historians and activists, such as Dick Gregory, have said the use of "N-word" instead of nigger robs younger generations of the full history of black people in America.
The term nigger has sometimes been extended in meaning so as to refer to all disadvantaged people. For example, Ron Dellums, an American politician, once said that "it's time for somebody to lead all of America's niggers". In 1978 musical artist Patti Smith employed the word in a similar context in her song Rock N Roll Nigger.
The New York City Council passed a resolution on February 28, 2007 that symbolically bans the use of the word nigger. There are no penalties for non-compliance." The resolution also asks that songs including the word nigger in their lyrics be excluded from consideration for the Grammy Awards.
The reason for the lack of penalties in the New York resolution is that any attempt to impose a penalty for pure speech, not accompanied by any clear or present danger, would violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, to which the States have been subject since the decision in Gitlow v. New York. Merely because a group of persons finds a particular word or expression offensive does not provide the government with any authority to ban it. For example, a Vietnam-era era draft protestor was held, in the case of Cohen v. California, to have a constitutional right to wear a jacket into the Los Angeles County Courthouse that bore the words "fuck the draft."
Boxer Muhammed Ali famously said in an interview regarding his refusal to enlist during the Vietnam War, 'I ain't going to fight in Vietnam, no Vietnamese ever called me a nigger'.
Concerning its use among African-Americans, Cornel West says "There's a certain rhythmic seduction to the word. If you speak in a sentence and you have to say 'cat,' 'companion,' or 'friend' as opposed to 'nigger,' then the rhythmic presentation is off. That rhythmic language is a form of historical memory for black people... When Richard Pryor came back from Africa and decided to stop using the word onstage, he would sometimes start to slip up because he was so used to speaking that way. It was the right word at the moment to keep the rhythm together in his sentence making."
In Australia
In Australia, though the word's meaning is generally understood, it is now rarely used by urban whites in any context; when referring to indigenous Australians, the casual terms Abo and the more derogatory boong or coon are used in its place. Nigger is sometimes used amongst working class Australians, when used in a casual sense between friends or work colleagues of both white and mixed race. It is generally used in imitation of American slang e.g. "Wassup, my nigger." It should be emphasised that the word nigger has far less shock value in Australia than the US and is often used in a typical Australian ironic context, without meaning to, or indeed causing offence. Black, Aboriginal, or Polynesian people may use the term to greet each other. It would not be acceptable to use the term to a stranger or casual acquaintance.
However, nigger has seen common use in rural or semi-frontier districts. In this context, the usage was British colonial, that is, applying generically to dark-skinned people of any origin (cf. Rudyard Kipling). This has led to controversy, since Australian Aborigines have started to take the term strongly to heart, in both the pejorative and revisionist senses (see below under Names of places and things). Most Australians would have never identified Aborigines as "niggers" though, believing it to be a specific reference to African Americans and American usage, rather than Australian.
Other languages
In various Romance languages, including the Spanish and Portuguese dialects used in Latin American and parts of Africa, a variety of words cognate with the Latin and sounding similar to the English word nigger are used without the disparaging connotation the word holds in English; in fact, of the two most common Portuguese words for "black" — negro and preto —, the latter is considered to be the (potentially) offensive one when referring to ethnicity. (Note that, contrary to "nigger", both Portuguese words can simply refer to the color black, either as adjective or as noun.) The French cognate , however, commonly used during the colonial period, is similarly considered offensive, whereas (literally, "black") is the standard word, with the Anglicism black being a common slang term.
Interestingly, in some places these words refer to people with an only slightly darker appearance than those native to Northern Europe, i.e. people who might be said to have a typically Mediterranean, Southern European/Eastern European appearance without any facial or hair-texture characteristics associated with black people. There are also socio-economic reasons behind this as southern Europeans but particularly eastern Europeans are stereotypically deemed more backwards and less well off than their northern European cousins.
Forms ultimately derived from Latin have been borrowed into various non-Romance languages, and may be used to refer to people without negative connotation; The Hungarian referred to black Africans without any negative connotations until the 1990s when its meaning changed under English influence. In Latvian, "negeris" is still referred to black Africans without any derogatory meaning. The word nigger, typically with the same spelling and more or less similar pronunciation, also appears as a loanword in languages other than English and has the same racist connotations as the English word. In Nazi propaganda, the German compound niggerjazz was used as a derogatory term for jazz music, which Nazi ideology held was a degenerate form of music. In Yiddish, "shvartzer", meaning 'black' is considered offensive while "neger" is the standard word.
Literary uses
Nigger has a long history of controversy in literature. Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer famous as a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, provoked debate and some protest from the African American community by titling his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. The controversy centered on the use of the word in the title and fueled the sales of the hit novel. Of the controversy, Langston Hughes wrote:
The famous controversy over Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a classic frequently taught in American schools, revolves largely around the novel's 215 uses of the word, often referring to Jim, Huck's raft mate. Advocates of the book point out that use of the word is not intended to spread racist stereotypes but simply reflects the situation at the time of writing, and that Jim is clearly depicted as a sympathetic character.
Slaves often pandered to racist assumptions by using the word nigger to their advantage in the self-deprecatory artifice of Tomming. Implicit was an unspoken reminder that a presumably inferior person or subhuman could not reasonably be held responsible for work performed incorrectly, a fire in the kitchen, or any similar offense. It was a means of deflecting responsibility in the hope of escaping the wrath of an overseer or master. Its use as a self-referential term was also a way to avoid suspicion and put whites at ease. A slave who referred to himself or another black as a "nigger" presumably accepted his subordinate role and posed no threat to white authority.
Bram Stoker, the Irish author best known for Dracula, makes use of the word 46 times in his 1911 novel, The Lair of the White Worm. Edgar Caswall's African servant, Oolanga, is often referred to as a "nigger" throughout the book.
Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None, also known as Ten Little Indians, originally appeared as Ten Little Niggers. Other examples of literary usage in the United Kingdom during the late 19th and early 20th centuries suggest a more neutral usage of the term, which can cause a problem when reading such books today when the word has such an offensive meaning. The Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado uses the word nigger twice. The executioner Ko-ko, in his song "I have a little list", sings of executing "the nigger serenader and the others of his race" (Gilbert meant white performers performing minstrel songs in blackface, a popular Victorian entertainment). The Mikado, in his song “Let the Punishment fit the Crime”, sings of having overly-made-up society ladies “Blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice”. Both lyrics are frequently changed in contemporary performances.
The Reverend W. V. Awdry's story Henry's Sneeze (part of The Railway Series of stories that is most known for Thomas the Tank Engine) originally described some soot-covered boys as being "as black as niggers". After complaints were made in 1972, the description was changed to "as black as soot".
War Comes to Willy Freeman by James Collier and Christopher Collier (ISBN 0-440-49504-0) mentions the word nigger nineteen times. Current readers complain as this use of the word is unnecessary and, in the 18th century context of the story, is not historically correct.
Rudyard Kipling's Just So Story "How the Leopard Got His Spots" tells of how an Ethiopian and a leopard, who are originally sand-colored, decide to paint themselves for camouflage when hunting in dense tropical forest. The story originally included a scene in which the leopard, who now has spots, asks the Ethiopian why he doesn't want spots as well. The Ethiopian's original reply, "Oh, plain black's best for a nigger", has been changed in many modern editions to read, "Oh, plain black's best for me."
Rudyard Kipling uses the word in his "A Counting-Out Song", from Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides, (1923). The rhyme reads "Eenie Meenie Mainee, Mo! Catch a nigger by the toe!"
In Graham Greene's short story "The Basement Room" (1935) , the (sympathetic) character Baines tells a boy who admires him of his time at a British colony in Africa: "You wouldn't believe it now, but I've had forty niggers under me, doing what I told them to". To the boy's question "Did you ever shoot a nigger?" Bains answers "I never had any call to shoot. Of course I carried a gun. But you didn't need to treat them bad, that just made them stupid. Why, I loved some of those dammed niggers. I couldn't help loving them". In the 1948 film "The Fallen Idol", which was based on the story, the word was avoided and replaced with "natives" (in the film version, however, Baines did on one occasion shoot and kill a rebellious "native").
Usage in popular culture
At one time, the word nigger was used freely in branding and packaging of products in the United States and United Kingdom. Such brands included Nigger Hair Tobacco and Niggerhead Oysters (and other canned foods). Brazil nuts were sometimes called "nigger toes". As times changed, so did labeling practices. The tobacco brand became "Bigger Hare" and the canned goods brand became "Negro Head". Eventually, such names disappeared from the Western products altogether. The term nigger remains common in China as a descriptor of a dark shade of brown. In 2007, a black household in Canada bought a chocolate-brown leather sofa manufactured in China, and the label listed the item's color as "Nigger Brown." The China-based Nanhai De Xing Leather Shoes Habiliment Co., Ltd.'s online store describes a leather men's boot as "nigger-brown."
The word nigger has appeared in many films (such as in Blazing Saddles, which used the term to ridicule racism), television shows and songs. The word was also used in all stage productions of the musical Show Boat from 1927 until 1946. It is part of the original lyric to the famous song Ol' Man River, as well as of Cotton Blossom, the show's opening chorus. It was not used in any of the film versions of the show, but it was included in the 1988 EMI recording of the complete original score, featuring its original lyrics, orchestrations, and vocal arrangements. Musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger and conductor John McGlinn have both argued that the word was not intended as an insult, but rather as a blunt illustration of how whites at that time perceived blacks.
In a comedy sketch on Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor direct the words "nigger" and "honky" towards one another during a word-association interview. Many comedians such as Pryor, Redd Foxx, Eddie Murphy and Lenny Bruce used it as a regular part of their comedy routines, and often in public settings. Bruce, in one of his live albums, used the word repeatedly to a black audience member so many times, that the man, angry at first, then laughed and understood Bruce's usage; to ridicule the racism attached to the word and to disempower it. Along with them, rap groups such as N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitudes), re-popularized the usage in their lyrics. Nowadays, it's common by comedians such as Eddie Griffin or rappers such as DMX, but at that time, it was still uncommon practice in pop culture. Some episodes of Sanford & Son had to be edited and went unaired because Foxx used the word so much during taping. On an episode of Mad TV, during a sketch called "Real Mother****ing Talk" (hosted by Aries Spears), Michael McDonald says "nigger please" in the presence of other African-Americans such as Xzibit.
Country music artist David Allan Coe has used racially charged words in his song lyrics such as redneck, white trash and nigger. (e.g. the songs "Cowboys & Niggers", "If That Ain't Country, I'll Kiss Your Ass" and "Nigger Fucker").
Michael Richards used the word nigger against a heckler during his stand-up comedy routine) Dog the Bounty Hunter used the word in reference to his son's girlfriend.
In Season 2, episode 20 of Family Matters, The word "nigger" was written on Laura Winslow's school locker. She also found a note inside her locker saying "If you want to learn Black History, Go back to Africa."
Recent controversies
In April 2007, a dark brown leather sofa set sold by Vanaik Furniture and Mattress Store in Toronto, Canada carried a tag that described its colour as "Nigger-brown." The discovery of the label immediately provoked outrage across Canada and the United States. It was eventually determined that the furniture manufacturer in China had used an outdated version of Kingsoft's Chinese-English translation software to produce the tags; when the chinese characters for "Dark-brown" were entered, the offensive term was produced. Neither the Canadian supplier or furniture store had noticed the tags during shipping. Kingsoft subsequently updated its software to avoid similar incidents.
Derived usage
- In the past, nigger was sometimes used as a synonym for "defect", deriving from the phrase "nigger in the woodpile", which originally referred to escaping slaves hiding among woodpiles being transported on trains. It came to mean some unseen problem. For example, the May 1886 issue of Scientific American, page 308 said, "The consequence of neglect might be that what the workmen call ‘a nigger’ would get into the armature, and burn it so as to destroy its service."
- The term nigger was used in lumber mills until the mid-point of the 20th century. It refers to a device that turns a log while it is being stripped of its bark. This may be an off-hand reference to the prejudicial use of the word, as until the machine was invented, this was considered a job too dangerous for anyone other than a black man.
- The British term for a black iron marine bollard, made from an old cannon partially buried muzzle upward with a slightly oversize black cannonball covering the hole, was "niggerhead". Sailors also once called an isolated coral head a niggerhead. The latter are notorious as navigation hazards.
- Many varieties of flora and fauna commonly are still referred to by terms which include the word. The nigger-head cactus, Echinocactus polycephalus, which is native to Arizona, is round, the size of a cabbage, and covered with large, crooked thorns. The colloquial name for echinacea, or coneflower, is, variously, "Kansas niggerhead" or "wild niggerhead". The "niggerhead termite" (Nasutitermes graveolus) is native to Australia.
- Around the world, the names of several varieties of foods do, or did, include the words. Brazil nuts are often referred to as "nigger toes". An Irish colloquialism described prunes as "nigger's knackers". A popular chocolate snack in Belgium is widely known as Negerinnetetten (negress's tits), however it is sold under the trademark Melo-cakes. Another chocolate treat in Holland was until recently called Negerzoenen (Negro kisses), but is now called Buys Zoenen (Buys Kisses) after the vendor's name. In Sweden, the traditional treat Negerbollar (Negro balls) is now more commonly referred to as Chocolate-, Oat- or Coco-balls.
- In 1960, a stand at the stadium in Toowoomba, Australia, was named the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" in honor of the 1920s rugby player Edward Stanley Brown. Brown, a white Australian, was given the nickname early in his life by his brothers because his skin was so white. Brown was known by this nickname all his life; his headstone is engraved with the word "nigger".Stephen Hagan, a lecturer at the Kumbari/Ngurpai Lag Higher Education Center of the University of Southern Queensland took the Toowoomba council to court over the use of the word, lost at the district and state level, and the High Court ruled that the matter was beyond federal jurisdiction. Local Aboriginals generally did not share Hagan's stance. Hagan went to the United Nations and won a recommendation that federal Australian authorities press the Queensland government to remove the word; the federal government responded by citing the High Court jurisdiction ruling.The stand was demolished in September 2008, and Queensland Sports Minister Judy Spence, whose department is funding the upgrade, said the use of "Nigger" would be unacceptable, either for the stand or on any commemorative plaque. Hagan's book, The N Word: One Man's Stand (Magabala Books, 2005, ISBN 978-1875641987), covers this episode. He is also writing a doctoral dissertation titled The Origin, Maintenance, and Legitimization of the Word 'Nigger' in the Australian Vernacular. Hagan has reignited his efforts against the brand name of Coon cheese.
- General John Pershing is remembered by the nickname "Black Jack", which was coined by World War I reporters who could not print his actual nickname, "Nigger Jack".
- The term "sand nigger" is an ethnic slur against Arabs, while the term "timber nigger" is an ethnic slur against Native Americans.
- Nigger lover is an offensive term initially applied to abolitionists. Later it was applied to any white people who sympathize or associate with African Americans.
- Nigger rich is sometimes today taken to be synonymous with nouveau riche (spending ostentatiously) but originally and still means spending recklessly and as quickly as possible. Such spending is a sound economic strategy for anyone at risk of losing what is spent to pillage or robbery; at least the memories cannot be robbed. "Subject to wanton pillage" is a fair description of the economic life of blacks for much of their American history, and hence practice of nigger rich is rational. However, the economic concept is applicable to any powerless group and in this sense need not be pejorative nor even refer to blacks.
Names of places
Because the word was used freely for many years, there are many official place-names containing the word nigger. Examples include Nigger Bill Canyon, Nigger Hollow, and Niggertown Marsh. In 1967, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the word nigger to Negro in 143 specific place names, although this did not always eradicate common use of the word in reference to such places.
One specific example is that of Nigger Head Mountain, located just outside of Burnet, Texas. For decades, a particular hillock was referred to as such due to the forestation at the peak resembling a black man's hairstyle of the times. It became a popular spot for the predominantly white local high school students to show their spirit by holding pep rallies and post-game parties, and even during the start of the Civil Rights Movement news services continued to refer to the hillock as "Nigger Head" with almost no reported complaints from either side of the rights struggle. In 1966, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, as part of her beautification efforts at the time, denounced the name and asked both the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the U.S. Forest Service to take immediate steps to change the name to something more acceptable to reflect changing views. The name was officially changed to "Colored Mountain" in 1968, and while both maps and road signs were replaced with ones bearing the new name, local inhabitants still refer to the location by its original name. There was also a "Dead Nigger Creek" in central Texas that changed its name to "Dead Negro Creek".
"Nigger Nate Grade" in Temecula, California was named after former slave and early settler Nate Harrison, but was changed in 1955 due to a request by the NAACP and renamed to Nate Harrison Grade. Many other place names in California use the word as well.
The Pacific Northwest region of the US has many uses of the word. Near Penticton, British Columbia, a prominent summit just west of the city used to be called Niggertoe Mountain but was renamed Mount Nkwala.
A point on the Lower Mississippi River was known well into the middle and late twentieth century as Free Nigger Point, or Freenigger Point. A later variation was Free Negro Point, but the location, in West Baton Rouge Parish, is now known as Wilkinson Point.
A jagged rock formation resembling a silhouetted human face protruding from a cliff over highway 421 north of Pennington Gap, Virginia was called "Nigger Head Rock" until the 1970s, when the name was changed to "Great Stone Face." Checks issued by a local bank in the 1940s bore an illustration of the rock accompanied by the original name.
Avoiding offense
"The N-word"
The euphemism "the N-word" became a part of the American lexicon during the racially polarizing trial of O.J. Simpson, a retired football player charged with — and ultimately acquitted of — a widely publicized double murder. One of the prosecution's key witnesses was Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who initially denied using racial slurs but whose prolific and derogatory use of it on a tape recording brought his credibility into question. The recordings were from a session in 1985 that Fuhrman had with Laura McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay about women in the police force. According to Fuhrman, he was using the word as part of his "bad-cop" persona.
Members of the press reporting on and discussing Fuhrman's testimony began using the term "the N-word" instead of repeating the actual word, presumably as a way to avoid offending audiences and advertisers.
Near-homophones
The word is Latin for "black" and occurs in many Latin scientific terms and names. (See Niger for other meanings such as the country in Africa.) is the root for some English words which are near homophones of nigger. Some sellers of niger seed, a small black seed commonly used as wild bird feed, have begun to sell it under the name Nyjer seed, in part to avoid the common mispronunciation. Also, the Classical Latin pronunciation is close to the English . The situation is not the same with Church Latin pronunciation, . It occurs in some biological and anatomical names, for example Hyoscamus niger.
Nigra, which is the way Negro is pronounced by some people in the American South, was considered by some to be a more polite way to refer to a black person. Also nigra is a Latin feminine form of niger = "black" and occurs in some biological and anatomical names, for example substantia nigra.
The words "niggardly" ("miserly") and "snigger" ("to laugh derisively") do not refer either to black people or to characteristics or behavior attributed to black people, nor do they have any etymological connection with the word. "Niggard" (a miserly person) is related to Old Norse nig, "stingy," and the verb "niggle" is most likely derived from the Old Norse verb nigla — "to chew, gnaw, or potter at". As such words are easily mistaken for "nigger," their use is frowned upon by some and sometimes seen as offensive. David Howard, a white city official in Washington, D.C., resigned from his job in January 1999, when he used niggardly in a fiscal sense while talking with black colleagues, who took offense at his use of the word. After reviewing the incident, Washington mayor Anthony Williams offered Howard his job back. Howard declined that position but accepted another position in the mayor's administration.
The word wigger is a portmanteau combining the words white and nigger generally used to describe a young, white individual who adopts certain aspects of hip hop, thug, or gangster culture.
A colloquialism in the British music industry for a freeloader is the word "ligger" (one who seeks to attend concerts and music industry events without paying). The word derives from another colloquialism lig (a gig or event) and variations thereof "to go ligging" (to go to a series of events.)
Many chat rooms and forums have the word "nigger" censored with replacement characters. "ni99er" and "NI66ER" are sometimes used to circumvent these measures.
Revisionist usage in Britain
"Nigger" was famously the name of a Black Labrador belonging to the RAF Second World War hero Wing Commander Guy Gibson. The dog died before the 617 Squadron's 1943 raid on the Ruhr dams (the "Dam Busters raid"), and "Nigger" was adopted as the radio code word signaling the destruction of the Möhne dam. The British television broadcaster ITV now tries to reduce offense by editing out some scenes including the dog when it broadcasts the film Dam Busters. This has been condemned by some as "revisionist", although the edited version apparently produced fewer complaints than a previous uncensored broadcast. However, this scene probably has been viewed more times than any other part of the movie. It was watched by the character Pink (Bob Geldof) in the hotel-room sequence in the Pink Floyd film The Wall, during which the dialogue relevant to the dog's death is screened.
Nigga
The word nigga as variant of nigger has been used self-referentially by many in the African American community, often as a pronoun to refer to a black man. With the rise in popularity of rap and hip-hop, the term has become more widely used among some black youth and among some non-blacks as well. This revisionist usage, particularly among non-blacks, has been the source of controversy.
See also
Footnotes
Further reading
- J. Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 0618197176.
- R. B. Moore, The Name "Negro": Its Origin And Evil Use. Black Classics Press, 1992. ISBN 0933121350.
- R. Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Vintage, 2003. ISBN 0375713719.
External links
- by Alex Alonso of Street Gangs Magazine
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