Over time, racial slurs have victimized all racial and ethnic groups. Still, no American group has endured as many racial nicknames as Blacks. Many of these slurs became entirely traditional pseudo-scientific, literary, cinematic, and everyday distortions of African Americans.
Nigger is one of the most notorious words in American culture. Some words carry more weight than others. At the risk of hyperbole, is genocide just another word? Pedophilia?
Social scientists refer to words like nigger, kike, spic, and wetback as ethnophaulisms. Ethnophaulisms are epithets and negative stereotypes.
The etymology of nigger is often traced to the Latin niger, meaning black. This word became the noun Negro (Black person) in English and simply the color Black in Spanish and Portuguese. In early modern French, niger became negre and, later, negress (Black woman) was unmistakably a part of language history. One can compare to negre the derogatory nigger and earlier English substitutes such as negar, neegar, neger, and niggor that developed into its lexico-semantic accurate version in English. Regardless of its origins, by the early 1800s, it had firmly established itself as a derogatory name. In the 21st century, it remains a principal term of White racism, regardless of who uses it.
Some scholars suggest that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the white Southern mispronunciation of Negro.
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Historically, nigger defined, limited, made fun of and ridiculed all Blacks. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal reason for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it strengthened the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless nobody. No other American surname carries as much purposeful cruelty.
It was a term of exclusion, a verbal reason for discrimination. The hierarchy was set up by an ideology that justified deceit, exploitation, and intimidation to keep Blacks "in their place." Every central societal establishment offered legitimacy to the racial hierarchy. Ministers preached that God was White and had condemned Blacks to be servants. Scientists measured Black skulls, brains, faces, and genitalia, seeking to prove that Whites were genetically superior to Blacks. White teachers, teaching only White students, taught that Blacks were less evolved cognitively, psychologically, and socially. The criminal justice system sanctioned a double standard of justice, including its unspoken approval of mob violence against Blacks, and there is still a similar double standard today: anti-Black laws and images saturated both American slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed.
The word, nigger, speaks to the human heredity of Black people. Nigger is the ultimate American insult; it is used to offend other ethnic groups. Jews are called White-niggers; Arabs, sand-niggers; Japanese, yellow-niggers.
The negative portrayals of Black people were reflected in and shaped by everyday objects: toys, postcards, ashtrays, detergent boxes, fishing lures, and children’s books. In 1874, the McLoughlin Brothers of New York produced a puzzle game called "Chopped Up Niggers." Beginning in 1878, the B. Leidersdory Company of Milwaukee, WI, produced NiggerHair Smoking Tobacco. Decades later, the name was changed to BiggerHair Smoking Tobacco. A 1916 magazine ad, copyrighted by Morris & Bendien, showed a Black child drinking ink. The caption read, "Nigger Milk". In 1917, the American Tobacco Company had a NiggerHair redemption promotion. NiggerHair coupons were redeemable for "cash, tobacco, S&H Green stamps, or presents." The J. Millhoff Company of England produced a series of cards in the 1930s, which were widely distributed in the United States. Nine Little Nigger Boys sat up very late; One overslept, and then there were eight.
In 1939, writer Agatha Christie published a book called Ten Little Niggers. Later editions sometimes changed the name to "Ten Little Indians" or "And Then There Were None," but as late as 1978, copies of the book with the original title were still being produced. It was not rare for sheet music made in the first half of the 20th century to use the word nigger on the cover. The Howley, Haviland Company of New York produced sheet music for the songs "Hesitate Mr. Nigger, Hesitate," and "You'se Just A Little Nigger, Still You'se Mine, All Mine." This last example was promoted as a children's lullaby.Some small towns used nigger names, for instance, Nigger Run Fork, Virginia. Nigger was a common name for darkly colored pets, especially dogs, cats, and horses. The so-called "Jolly Nigger Banks," first produced in the 1800s, were widely distributed as late as the 1960s. Another standard piece, with many variations, is a picture of a dozen Black children rushing to a swimming hole, produced on posters, postcards, and prints.
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The Coon caricature, for example, was a tall, skinny, loose-jointed, dark-skinned male, often bald, with oversized, ruby-red lips. His clothing was either ragged and dirty or highly gaudy. His slow, exaggerated walk suggested laziness. He was a pauper, lacking ambition and the skills necessary for upward social mobility. He was a buffoon. When frightened, the Coon's eyes bulged and darted. His speech was slurred, halted, and stuffed with malapropisms. His piercing, high-pitched voice made Whites laugh. The Coon caricature dehumanized Blacks and served to justify social, economic, and political discrimination.
Coon caricature
The civil rights movement, Supreme Court decisions, the Black empowerment movement, broad civil rights legislation, and a general embracing of democracy by many American citizens have worn down America’s racial pecking order from slavery, moving into the Jim Crow period, and today’s institutional racism. Yet, the word nigger has not left, and its relationship with anti-Black prejudice remains symbiotic, interrelated, and interconnected. Ironically, it is co-dependent because a racist society created nigger and continues to feed and sustain it. But the word no longer needs racism or brutal and blatant forms to survive.
After a period of relative dormancy, the word nigger has been reborn in popular culture. It is hard-edged and streetwise, and it has crossed over into movies like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), where it became a symbol of "street authenticity" and hipness. Denzel Washington's character in Training Day (2001) uses nigger frequently and harshly. Richard Pryor long ago rejected using the word in his comedy act. Still, Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, and other Black male comedy kings use nigger regularly and not affectionately. Justin Driver, a social critic, makes a case that both Rock and Tucker are modern minstrels shucking, jiving, and grinning in the tradition of Stepin Fetchit.
On a smaller scale, words other than Nigger remain accepted public banter in White America. In 1988, on Martin Luther King's birthday, sports commentator Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder said (on national television) that Black people were better at sports because of slave plantation breeding techniques. "During the slave period, the slave owner would breed his Black with his big woman so that he would have a big Black-kid. That's where it all started." Another sports announcer, Billy Packer, referred to the pro basketball player Allan Iverson as a "tough monkey." Another announcer, Howard Cosell, referred to Alvin Garrett, a pro football player with the Washington Redskins, as a "little monkey" during a Monday Night Football game.
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White supremacists have found the Internet an indispensable tool for spreading their message of hate. An Internet search of nigger using Netscape or Alta Vista locates many anti-Black web pages: Niggers Must Die, Hang A Nigger for America, Nigger Joke Central, and many others. Web searchers find what most Blacks know from personal experience, that nigger is an expression of anti-Black hostility.
No American minority group has been caricatured as often or in as many ways as Black people. These misrepresentations feature distorted physical descriptions and harmful cultural and behavioral stereotypes.
In 2003, the effort to correct the shameful prevalence of this word yielded positive results. Kweisi Mfume, (then) president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), gave a speech at Virginia Tech. Everyone was informed that a landmark decision had been made involving the people at Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Nigger, like the false impressions it incorporates and means, puts down Blacks and rationalizes their abuse. Black use of the word or its alternatives has not lessened its hurt. This is not surprising in a four-century-old racial hierarchy, shaping the historical relationship between white-European Americans and African Americans. Anti-Black attitudes, motives, values, and behavior continue.
Also, in 2015, white-American student members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity from the University of Oklahoma were caught openly performing a racist chant against Blacks using that word in a song. In 2022, actor Samuel L. Its effect can be explosive and painful: Harvard University professor Randall Kennedy has traced the history of the N-word to understand the evolution of the infamous racial slur. Kennedy joins special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault to discuss this history, including reappropriations of the word and the complexities and damages of its usage today.
Yesterday, Charlotte television reporter Steve Crump accepted an apology from Brian Eybers. The two men were involved in a confrontation last week during which Eybers used the N-word.
More than a thousand geographic features in the United States have racial slurs in their name. Now an open letter from four graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is calling on geoscientists to support a recent bill in Congress to help remove the names. The Reconciliation in Place Names Act would give a federal board more power to change offensive place-names. “There hasn’t been a push within the geosciences to figure out how we handle the fact that these are historical names,” said coauthor Meghana Ranganathan, who studies Antarctic ice sheets.
An investigation in 2015 by the data-mining company Vocativ found 1,441 federally recognized place-names that contained slurs. Vocativ found at least 558 places across the United States that have offensive words for Black people, including the words “Negro,” “Uncle Tom,” and “Jim Crow.” They also found derogatory names for Asian Americans.
The letter came about from the experience of letter writer Julia Wilcots, who was surprised to see a racist name used in a place-name for a canyon in New Mexico at one of her potential field sites. Board on Geographic Names removed all instances of this particular word in 1963 (as well as a slur for Japanese people in 1974), the predominant geologic map of the area was published before the name change. Wilcots found at least 11 instances of the slur in the scientific report.
Geographic Features in the United States Have Racial Slurs in Their Name
“You could say, ‘I’m not going to be racist myself. When I write my paper about this area, I’m not going to use the N-word. I’m going to use the formal name on the map,’” she said. “I’m pretty fully committed to geology, and this hasn’t deterred me from continuing in the field. It’s emboldened me to be more outspoken in the field,” Wilcots said.
In September 2020, then New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland (D) and Texas Congressman Al Green (D) introduced a bill that would speed up name changes. Board on Geographic Names handles alterations to names, but the board can’t actively seek out names to change: They merely review proposals and are not a rubber stamp for submitted changes. Instead of relying on proposals to the board, the new bill creates an advisory committee that will seek out offensive names to change. People appointed to the committee will have backgrounds in civil rights and race relations, as well as come from tribes or tribal organizations.
“It’s past time to change the offensive names of public lands, especially with input from groups who have been discriminated against,” said Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo. Name changes can be simple, said Ranganathan. In Utah, the board approved changing the name of Negro Bill Canyon to Grandstaff Canyon in 2017.
Another interesting and confusing experience in American speech is the use of nigger by African Americans. Poetry by Blacks is instructive; one can often find the word nigger used in Black writings. Major and minor poets alike have used it with startling results: Imamu Amiri Baraka, the contemporary poet, uses nigger in one of his angriest poems, "I Don't Love You," and what was the world to the words of slick nigger fathers too depressed to explain why they could not appear to be men. One wonders how readers are supposed to understand "nigger fathers.” Baraka's use of this imagery, regardless of his purpose, reinforces the stereotype of the worthless, pleasure-seeking “coon” caricature. Ted Joans's use of nigger in "The Nice Colored Man" is an example of an explainable expression. Joans said he was asked to give a reading in London because he was a "nice colored man." Infuriated by the labels "nice" and "colored,” Joans wrote a quintessential rebellious poem.
The reality is that many of these uses are still prevalent in present-day African American society. Herein lies part of the difficulty: The word, nigger, endures because it is used over and over again, even by the people it insults. Writer Devorah Major said, "It's hard for me to say what someone can or can't say because I work with language all the time, and I don't want to be limited." Poet and professor Opal Palmer Adisa claims that the use of nigger or nigga is "the same as young people's obsession with swearing.
When used by Blacks, nigger refers to, among other things, all Blacks ("A nigger can't even get a break."); Black men ("Sisters want niggers to work all day long."); Blacks who behave in a stereotypical, and sometimes legendary, manner ("He's a lazy, good-for-nothing nigger."); things ("This piece-of-shit car is such a nigger."); enemies ("I'm sick and tired of those niggers bothering me!"); and friends ("Me and my niggers are tight."). This final habit, like a kind word, is particularly challenging. "Zup Niggah" has become a nearly universal greeting among young urban Black people. When asked, Blacks who use nigger or its variants argue that it has to be understood in its situation; repeated use of the word by Blacks will make it less offensive. It’s not the same word because Whites are saying nigger (and niggers), but Blacks are saying niggah (and niggaz). These arguments may not be valid in the real world.
Brother (Brotha) and Sister (Sistha or Sista) are terms of endearment. Nigger was and still is a word of disrespect. More to the point, the artificial dichotomy between Blacks or African Americans (respectable and middle-class) and niggers (disrespectable and lower class) should be challenged. Black is a nigger, regardless of behavior, earnings, goals, clothing, skills, ethics, or skin color. Finally, if continued use of the word lessened its damage, then nigger would not hurt or cause pain now. Blacks, from slavery until today, have internalized many negative images that White society cultivated and broadcast about Black skin and Black people. This is mirrored in cycles of self and same-race hatred. The use of the word, nigger by Blacks reflects this hatred, even when the user is unaware of the psychological forces involved. Nigger is the ultimate expression of White racism and White superiority, no matter how it is pronounced.
Ultimately, the word "nigger" remains a potent symbol of racial hatred and a reminder of the long history of discrimination against Black people in America. Its continued use, even among those it is intended to harm, reflects the complex and enduring legacy of racism in American society.
