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Nigger

In the English language, the word nigger is a racial slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the 1980s, references to nigger have been progressively replaced by the euphemism "the N-word", notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used.[1] In an instance of linguistic reappropriation, the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans, most commonly in the form of nigga, whose spelling originated from the phonological system of African-American English.[1][2]

The word nigger, then spelled in English neger or niger, appeared in the 16th century as an adaptation of French nègre, itself from Spanish negro. They go back to the Latin adjective niger ([ˈnɪɡɛr]), meaning "black".[1][2] It was initially seen as a relatively neutral term, essentially synonymous with the English word negro. Rather than demonstrating a hostile meaning of the word itself, early attested uses during the Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th century) often conveyed a patronizing tone that reflects the underlying attitudes held towards black people by their white authors. Building up on these mildly disparaging social meanings, the word took on a derogatory connotation from the mid-18th century onward, to the extent that it had "degenerated into an overt slur" by the middle of the 19th century. Some authors kept on using the term in a neutral sense up until the later part of the 20th century, at which point the use of nigger became increasingly seen as controversial regardless of its context or intent.[1][2][3]

Because the word nigger has historically "wreaked symbolic violence, often accompanied by physical violence", it began to disappear from general popular culture from the second part of the 20th century onward, at the exception of cases derived from intra-group usage such as hip hop culture.[2] The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary describes the term as "perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English".[2] The Oxford English Dictionary writes that "this word is one of the most controversial in English, and is liable to be considered offensive or taboo in almost all contexts (even when used as a self-description)".[1] Intra-group usage has been criticized by some contemporary African-American authors, a group of them (the eradicationists) calling for the total abandonment of its usage (even under the variant nigga), which they see as contributing to the "construction of an identity founded on self-hate".[2][4][5][6] In wider society, the inclusion of the word nigger in classic works of literature (as in Mark Twain's 1884 book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and in more recent cultural productions (such as Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction) has sparked controversy and ongoing debate.[4][6]

By extension of its derogatory connotation, the word nigger has also been historically used to designate "any person considered to be of low social status" (as in the expression white nigger) or "any person whose behaviour is regarded as reprehensible", and in other national contexts to refer to Aboriginal and Māori people. In some cases, with awareness of the word's offensive connotation, but without intention to cause offense, it can refer to a "a victim of prejudice likened to that endured by African Americans" (as in John Lennon's 1972 song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World").[1]

Etymology and history

Early use

The variants neger and negar derive from various Romance words for 'black', including the Spanish and Portuguese word negro (black) and the now-pejorative French nègre. Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger ('black').

In its original English-language usage, nigger (also spelled niger) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes".[7] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775.[8]

In the colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony.[9] Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in New York under the Dutch and in metropolitan Philadelphia's Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name Begraafplaats van de Neger (Cemetery of the Negro). An early occurrence of neger in American English dates from 1625 in Rhode Island.[10] Lexicographer Noah Webster suggested the neger spelling in place of negro in his 1806 dictionary.[11]

18th and 19th century United States

 
Lyrics for the song "Run, Nigger, Run", about a fugitive slave escaping from a slave patrol, printed in 1851.

During the late 18th and early 19th century, the word "nigger" also described an actual labor category, which African American laborers adopted for themselves as a social identity, and thus white people used the descriptor word as a distancing or derogatory epithet, as if "quoting black people" and their non-standard language.[12] During the early 1800s to the late 1840s fur trade in the Western United States, the word was spelled "niggur", and is often recorded in the literature of the time. George Fredrick Ruxton used it in his "mountain man" lexicon, without pejorative connotation. "Niggur" was evidently similar to the modern use of "dude" or "guy". This passage from Ruxton's Life in the Far West illustrates the word in spoken form—the speaker here referring to himself: "Travler, marm, this niggur's no travler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!"[13] It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period, as Indians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a "niggur".[14] "The noun slipped back and forth from derogatory to endearing."[15]

By 1859 the term was clearly used to offend, in an attack on abolitionist John Brown.[16]

The term "colored" or "negro" became a respectful alternative. In 1851, the Boston Vigilance Committee, an abolitionist organization, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the "opprobrious" character of the word nigger, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than "colored" or "negro".[17] By the turn of the century, "colored" had become sufficiently mainstream that it was chosen as the racial self-identifier for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 2008 Carla Sims, its communications director, said "the term 'colored' is not derogatory, [the NAACP] chose the word 'colored' because it was the most positive description commonly used [in 1909, when the association was founded]. It's outdated and antiquated but not offensive."[18]

Mark Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported speech, but used the term "negro" when writing in his own narrative persona.[19] Joseph Conrad published a novella in Britain with the title The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897); in the United States, it was released as The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle; the original had been called "the ugliest conceivable title" in a British review[20] and American reviewers understood the change as reflecting American "refinement" and "prudery."[21]

 
The US edition of Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus" was called The Children of the Sea.

20th century United States

A style guide to British English usage, H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, states in the first edition (1926) that applying the word nigger to "others than full or partial negroes" is "felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least a very arrogant inhumanity"; but the second edition (1965) states "N. has been described as 'the term that carries with it all the obloquy and contempt and rejection which whites have inflicted on blacks'".[22] The quoted formula goes back to the writings of the American journalist Harold R. Isaacs, who used it in several writings between 1963 and 1975.[23] Black characters in Nella Larsen's 1929 novel Passing view its use as offensive; one says "I'm really not such an idiot that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger, it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again."[24]

By the late 1960s, the social change brought about by the civil rights movement had legitimized the racial identity word Black as mainstream American English usage to denote black-skinned Americans of African ancestry. President Thomas Jefferson had used this word of his slaves in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), but "Black" had not been widely used until the later 20th century. (See Black Pride, and, in the context of worldwide anti-colonialism initiatives, Négritude.)

In the 1980s, the term "African American" was advanced analogously to the terms "German American" and "Irish American", and was adopted by major media outlets. Moreover, as a compound word, African American resembles the vogue word Afro-American, an early-1970s popular usage. Some Black Americans continue to use the word nigger, often spelled as nigga and niggah, without irony, either to neutralize the word's impact or as a sign of solidarity.[25]

Usage

Surveys from 2006 showed that the American public widely perceived usage of the term to be wrong or unacceptable, but that nearly half of whites and two-thirds of blacks knew someone personally who referred to blacks by the term.[26] Nearly one-third of whites and two-thirds of blacks said they had personally used the term within the last five years.[26]

In names of people, places and things

Political use

 
Historical American cartoon titled "Why the nigger is not fit to vote", by Thomas Nast, arguing the reason Democrats objected to African-Americans having the vote was that, in the 1868 US presidential election, African-Americans voted for the Republican candidates Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. "Seymour friends meet here" in the background is a reference to the Democratic Party candidate: Horatio Seymour.

"Niggers in the White House"[27] was written in reaction to an October 1901 White House dinner hosted by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, who had invited Booker T. Washington—an African-American presidential advisor—as a guest. The poem reappeared in 1929 after First Lady Lou Hoover, wife of President Herbert Hoover, invited Jessie De Priest, the wife of African-American congressman Oscar De Priest, to a tea for congressmen's wives at the White House.[28] The identity of the author—who used the byline "unchained poet"—remains unknown.

In explaining his refusal to be conscripted to fight the Vietnam War (1955–75), professional boxer Muhammad Ali said, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger."[29] Later, his modified answer was the title of a documentary, No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968), about the front-line lot of the U.S. Army Black soldier in combat in Vietnam.[30] An Ali biographer reports that, when interviewed by Robert Lipsyte in 1966, the boxer actually said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."[31]

On February 28, 2007, the New York City Council symbolically banned the use of the word nigger; however, there is no penalty for using it. This formal resolution also requests excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word; however, Ron Roecker, vice president of communication for the Recording Academy, doubted it will have any effect on actual nominations.[32][33]

The word can be invoked politically for effect. When Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick came under intense scrutiny for his conduct in 2008, he deviated from an address to the city council, saying, "In the past 30 days, I've been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life." Opponents accused him of "playing the race card" to save his political life.[34]

Cultural use

The implicit racism of the word nigger has generally rendered its use taboo. Magazines and newspapers typically do not use this word but instead print censored versions such as "n*gg*r", "n**ger", "n——" or "the N-word";[35] see below.

 
1885 illustration from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, captioned "Misto Bradish's nigger"

The use of nigger in older literature has become controversial because of the word's modern meaning as a racist insult. One of the most enduring controversies has been the word's use in Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most challenged book during the 1990s, according to the American Library Association.[36] The novel is written from the point of view, and largely in the language, of an uneducated white boy, who is drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft with an adult escaped slave, Jim. The word "nigger" is used (mostly about Jim) over 200 times.[37][38] Twain's advocates note that the novel is composed in then-contemporary vernacular usage, not racist stereotype, because Jim, the black man, is a sympathetic character.

In 2011, a new edition published by NewSouth Books replaced the word "nigger" with "slave" and also removed the word "injun". The change was spearheaded by Twain scholar Alan Gribben in the hope of "countering the 'pre-emptive censorship'" that results from the book's being removed from school curricula over language concerns.[39][40] The changes sparked outrage from critics Elon James, Alexandra Petri and Chris Meadows.[41]

In his 1999 memoir All Souls, Irish-American Michael Patrick MacDonald describes how many white residents of the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston used this meaning to degrade the people considered to be of lower status, whether white or black.[42]

Of course, no one considered himself a nigger. It was always something you called someone who could be considered anything less than you. I soon found out there were a few black families living in Old Colony. They'd lived there for years and everyone said that they were okay, that they weren't niggers but just black. It felt good to all of us to not be as bad as the hopeless people in D Street or, God forbid, the ones in Columbia Point, who were both black and niggers. But now I was jealous of the kids in Old Harbor Project down the road, which seemed like a step up from Old Colony ...

In an academic setting

The word's usage in literature has led to it being a point of discussion in university lectures as well. In 2008, Arizona State University English professor Neal A. Lester created what has been called "the first ever college-level class designed to explore the word 'nigger'".[43] Starting in the following decade, colleges struggled with attempts to teach material about the slur in a sensitive manner. In 2012, a sixth grade Chicago teacher Lincoln Brown was suspended after repeating the contents of a racially charged note being passed around in class. Brown later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the headmaster and the Chicago public schools.[44] A New Orleans high school also experienced controversy in 2017.[45] Such increased attention prompted Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, the daughter of Richard Pryor and a professor at Smith College, to give a talk opining that the word was leading to a "social crisis" in higher education.[46]

In addition to Smith College, Emory University, Augsburg University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Simpson College all suspended professors in 2019 over referring to the word "nigger" by name in classroom settings.[47][48][49] In two other cases, a professor at Princeton decided to stop teaching a course on hate speech after students protested his utterance of "nigger" and a professor at DePaul had his law course cancelled after 80% of the enrolled students transferred out.[50][51] Instead of pursuing disciplinary action, a student at the College of the Desert challenged his professor in a viral class presentation which argued that her use of the word in a lecture was not justified.[52]

In the workplace

In 2018, the head of the media company Netflix, Reed Hastings, fired his chief communications officer, Jonathan Friedland, for using the word twice during internal discussions about sensitive words.[53] In explaining why, Hastings wrote:

[The word's use] in popular media like music and film have created some confusion as to whether or not there is ever a time when the use of the N-word is acceptable. For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script). There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context. The use of the phrase 'N-word' was created as a euphemism, and the norm, with the intention of providing an acceptable replacement and moving people away from using the specific word. When a person violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for many.[54]

The following year, screenwriter Walter Mosley turned down a job after his human resources department took issue with him using the word to describe racism that he experienced as a black man.[55]

While defending Laurie Sheck, a professor who was cleared of ethical violations for quoting I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin, John McWhorter wrote that efforts to condemn racist language by white Americans had undergone mission creep.[56] Similar controversies outside the United States have occurred at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and the Madrid campus of Syracuse University.[57][58] In June 2020, Canadian news host Wendy Mesley was suspended and replaced with a guest host after she attended a meeting on racial justice and, in the process of quoting a journalist, used "a word that no-one like me should ever use".[59] In August 2020, BBC news, with the agreement of victim and family, mentioned the slur when reporting on a physical and verbal assault on the black NHS worker and musician K-Dogg. Within the week the BBC received over 18,600 complaints, the black radio host David Whitely resigned in protest, and the BBC apologized.[60]

In 2021, in Tampa, Florida, a 27-year-old black employee at a Dunkin' Donuts punched a 77-year-old white customer after the customer had repeatedly called the employee a nigger.[61] The customer fell to the floor and hit his head. Three days later, he died, having suffered a skull fracture and brain contusions. The employee was arrested, and charged with manslaughter. In a plea bargain, the employee pled guilty to felony battery, and was sentenced to two years of house arrest. In 2022, in explaining why the employee did not receive any jail time, Grayson Kamm, a spokesman for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, said "Two of the primary factors were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant, and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language."[62]

Intra-group versus intergroup usage

Black listeners often react to the term differently, depending on whether it is used by white speakers or by Black speakers. In the former case, it is regularly understood as insensitive or insulting; in the latter, it may carry notes of in-group disparagement, and is often understood as neutral or affectionate, a possible instance of reappropriation.[63]

In the Black community, nigger is often rendered as nigga. This usage has been popularized by the rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It is not necessarily derogatory and is often used to mean homie or friend.[64]

Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated,[64] although it has established a foothold amongst younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger. Usage of nigga by mixed-race individuals is still largely considered taboo,[a] albeit not as inflammatory as nigger. As of 2001, trends indicated that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even amongst white youth, due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture.[65] Linguist Keith Allan rejects the view that nigger is always a slur, arguing that it is also used as a marker of camaraderie and friendship, comparable to the British and Australian term "mate" or the American "buddy".[66]

According to Arthur K. Spears in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 2006:

In many African-American neighborhoods, nigga is simply the most common term used to refer to any male, of any race or ethnicity. Increasingly, the term has been applied to any person, male or female. "Where y'all niggas goin?" is said with no self-consciousness or animosity to a group of women, for the routine purpose of obtaining information. The point: nigga is evaluatively neutral in terms of its inherent meaning; it may express positive, neutral, or negative attitudes;[67]

Kevin Cato, meanwhile, observes:

For instance, a show on Black Entertainment Television, a cable network aimed at a Black audience, described the word nigger as a "term of endearment". "In the African American community, the word nigga. (not nigger) brings out feelings of pride." (Davis 1). Here the word evokes a sense of community and oneness among Black people. Many teens I interviewed felt the word had no power when used amongst friends, but when used among white people the word took on a completely different meaning. In fact, comedian Alex Thomas on BET stated, "I still better not hear no white boy say that to me ... I hear a white boy say that to me, it means 'White boy, you gonna get your ass beat.'"[68]

Addressing the use of nigger by Black people, philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West said in 2007:

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.[69]

2010s: increase in use and controversy

In the 2010s, "nigger" in its various forms saw use with increasing frequency by African Americans amongst themselves or in self-expression, the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics.[70][71] Ta-Nehisi Coates suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for non-Blacks to utter while singing or rapping along to hip-hop, and that by being so restrained it gives white Americans (specifically) an impression of what it is like to not be entitled to "do anything they please, anywhere". A concern often raised is whether frequent exposure will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non-Black Americans who currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking.[72]

Related words

Derivatives

 
Anti-abolitionist cartoon from the 1860 presidential campaign illustrating colloquial usage of "Nigger in the woodpile"

In several English-speaking countries, "Niggerhead" or "nigger head" was used as a name for many sorts of things, including commercial products, places, plants and animals, as a descriptive term (lit. 'Black person's head'). It also is or was a colloquial technical term in industry, mining, and seafaring. Nigger as "defect" (a hidden problem), derives from "nigger in the woodpile", a US slave-era phrase denoting escaped slaves hiding in train-transported woodpiles.[73] In the 1840s, the Morning Chronicle newspaper report series London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew, records the usages of both "nigger" and the similar-sounding word "niggard" denoting a false bottom for a grate.[74]

In American English, "nigger lover" initially applied to abolitionists, then to white people sympathetic towards Black Americans.[75] The portmanteau word wigger ('White' + 'nigger') denotes a white person emulating "street Black behavior", hoping to gain acceptance to the hip hop, thug, and gangsta sub-cultures. Norman Mailer wrote of the antecedents of this phenomenon in 1957 in his essay The White Negro.

The N-word euphemism

Notable usage[76]

The prosecutor [Christopher Darden], his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile he would not utter it. "It's the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language."

— Kenneth B. Noble, January 14, 1995 The New York Times[77]

The euphemism the N-word became mainstream American English usage during the racially contentious O. J. Simpson murder case in 1995.[citation needed] Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman, of the Los Angeles Police Department—who denied using racist language on duty—impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his police work. The recordings, by screenplay writer Laura McKinney, were from a 1985 research session wherein the detective assisted her with a screenplay about LAPD policewomen. Fuhrman excused his use of the word saying he used nigger in the context of his "bad cop" persona. Media personnel who reported on Fuhrman's testimony substituted the N-word for nigger.[citation needed]

Similar-sounding words

Niger (Latin for "black") occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger; sellers of niger seed (used as bird feed), sometimes use the spelling Nyjer seed. The classical Latin pronunciation /ˈniɡeɾ/ sounds similar to the English /ˈnɪɡər/, occurring in biologic and anatomic names, such as Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane), and even for animals that are in fact not black, such as Sciurus niger (fox squirrel).

Nigra is the Latin feminine form of niger (black), used in biologic and anatomic names such as substantia nigra (black substance).

The word niggardly (miserly) is etymologically unrelated to nigger, derived from the Old Norse word nig (stingy) and the Middle English word nigon. In the US, this word has been misinterpreted as related to nigger and taken as offensive. In January 1999, David Howard, a white Washington, D.C., city employee, was compelled to resign after using niggardly—in a financial context—while speaking with Black colleagues, who took umbrage. After reviewing the misunderstanding, Mayor Anthony A. Williams offered to reinstate Howard to his former position. Howard refused reinstatement but took a job elsewhere in the mayor's government.[78]

Denotational extension

 
Graffiti in Palestine referring to Arabs as "sand-niggers"

The denotations of nigger also include non-Black/non-White and other disadvantaged people. Some of these terms are self-chosen, to identify with the oppression and resistance of Black Americans; others are ethnic slurs used by outsiders.

Jerry Farber's 1967 essay collection, The Student as Nigger, used the word as a metaphor for what he saw as the role forced on students. Farber had been, at the time, frequently arrested as a civil rights activist while beginning his career as a literature professor.

In his 1968 autobiography White Niggers of America: The Precocious Autobiography of a Quebec "Terrorist", Pierre Vallières, a Front de libération du Québec leader, refers to the oppression of the Québécois people in North America.

In 1969, in the course of being interviewed by the British magazine Nova, artist Yoko Ono said "woman is the nigger of the world;" three years later, her husband, John Lennon, published the song of the same name—about the worldwide phenomenon of discrimination against women—which was socially and politically controversial to US sensibilities.

Sand nigger, an ethnic slur against Arabs, and timber nigger and prairie nigger, ethnic slurs against Native Americans, are examples of the racist extension of nigger upon other non-white peoples.[79]

In 1978, singer Patti Smith used the word in "Rock N Roll Nigger".

In 1979, English singer Elvis Costello used the phrase white nigger in "Oliver's Army", a song describing the experiences of working-class soldiers in the British military forces on the "murder mile" (Belfast during The Troubles), where white nigger was a common British pejorative for Irish Catholics. Later,[when?] the producers of the British talent show Stars in Their Eyes forced a contestant to censor one of its lines, changing "all it takes is one itchy trigger – One more widow, one less white nigger" to "one less white figure".[citation needed]

Historian Eugene Genovese, noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class, and relations between planters and slaves in the South, uses the word pointedly in The World the Slaveholders Made (1988).

For reasons common to the slave condition all slave classes displayed a lack of industrial initiative and produced the famous Lazy Nigger, who under Russian serfdom and elsewhere was white. Just as not all Blacks, even under the most degrading forms of slavery, consented to become niggers, so by no means all or even most of the niggers in history have been Black.

The editor of Green Egg, a magazine described in The Encyclopedia of American Religions as a significant periodical, published an essay entitled "Niggers of the New Age". This argued that Neo-Pagans were treated badly by other parts of the New Age movement.[80]

Other languages

Other languages, particularly Romance languages, have words that sound similar to or share etymological roots with nigger but do not necessarily mean the same. In some of these languages, the words refer to the color black in general and are not specifically used to refer to black people. When used to refer to black people, these words have acquired varying degrees of offensiveness, ranging from completely neutral (as in Spanish negro) to highly racist (as in Finnish Neekeri). Examples of related words in other languages include:

  • Dutch: Neger ('Negro') used to be neutral, but many now consider it to be avoided in favor of zwarte ('Black').[81][82][83][84] Zwartje ('little black one') can be amicably or offensively used. Nikker is always pejorative.[85]
  • Finnish: Neekeri ('Negro/nigger'), as a loan word ('Neger') from the Swedish language appeared for the first time in a book published in 1771.[86] The use of the Finnish equivalent ('neekeri') began in the late 19th century. Until the 1980s, it was commonly used and generally not yet considered derogatory, although a few instances of it being considered to be so have been documented since the 1950s; by the mid-1990s the word was considered racist, especially in the metropolitan area and among the younger population.[87] It has since then usually been replaced by the metonym 'musta' ('Black [person]').[88] In a survey conducted in 2000, Finnish respondents considered the term 'Neekeri' to be among the most offensive of minority designations.[89]
  • French: Nègre is now considered derogatory. Although Nègre littéraire was the standard term for a ghostwriter, it has largely been supplanted by prête-plume. Some white Frenchmen have the surname Nègre. The word can still be used as a synonym of "sweetheart" in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs.
  • German: Neger is dated and now considered offensive. Schwarze/-r ('Black [person]') or Farbige/-r ("colored [person]") is more neutral.
  • Haitian Creole: nèg is used for any man in general, regardless of skin color (like dude in American English). Haitian Creole derives predominantly from French.
  • Italian has three variants: negro, nero and di colore. The first one is the most historically attested and was the most commonly used until the 1960s as an equivalent of the English word "negro". It was gradually felt as offensive during the 1970s and replaced with nero and di colore. Nero was considered a better translation of the English word black, while di colore is a loan translation of the English word colored.[90]
  • Portuguese: Negro (as well as preto) is neutral;[91] nevertheless preto can be offensive or at least "politically incorrect" and is almost never proudly used by Afro-Brazilians. Crioulo and macaco are always extremely pejorative.[92]
  • Russian: the word негр (negr) has been commonly used to describe Black people. It can also be used as a synonym for underpaid worker, "литературный негр" ('literaturny negr') means ghostwriter.[93][94][95] Негритёнок (negrityonok) means a negro child. For example, the mystery novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, originally called Ten Little Niggers, is known in Russia as Десять негритят (dyesyt' negrityat). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the word мавр ('moor') was used to describe people with dark skin. Nowadays, a black person would often be described neutrally as "чернокожий", literally "black-skinned". The word чёрный (chornyi, 'black') is often used as a derogatory word for peoples of the Caucasus and, less often, Black people.
  • Spanish: Negro is the word for "black" and is the only way to refer to that color.[96]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Whether this usage is considered acceptable may depend on a sense of the speaker's in-group belonging, as judged by the speaker him- or herself, the listener(s), or others.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. nigger, n. and adj.; neger, n. and adj.; N-word, n.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Rahman, Jacquelyn (2012). "The N Word: Its History and Use in the African American Community". Journal of English Linguistics. 40 (2): 137–171. doi:10.1177/0075424211414807. ISSN 0075-4242. S2CID 144164210.
  3. ^ McWhorter, John (April 30, 2021). "Opinion | How the N-Word Became Unsayable" – via NYTimes.com.
  4. ^ a b Kennedy, Randall (2002). Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Pantheon Books. pp. 36–37, 91–111. ISBN 978-0-9650397-7-2.
  5. ^ Asim, Jabari (2008). The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why. HMH. ISBN 978-0-547-52494-8.
  6. ^ a b Allan, Keith (2015). "When is a Slur Not a Slur? The Use of Nigger in 'Pulp Fiction'". Language Sciences. 52: 187–199. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2015.03.001.
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Sources

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Further reading

nigger, confused, with, negro, niger, niger, state, other, uses, disambiguation, word, disambiguation, nigga, english, language, word, nigger, racial, slur, used, against, black, people, especially, african, americans, starting, 1980s, references, nigger, have. Not to be confused with Negro Niger or Niger State For other uses see Nigger disambiguation N word disambiguation and Nigga In the English language the word nigger is a racial slur used against black people especially African Americans Starting in the 1980s references to nigger have been progressively replaced by the euphemism the N word notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used 1 In an instance of linguistic reappropriation the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans most commonly in the form of nigga whose spelling originated from the phonological system of African American English 1 2 The word nigger then spelled in English neger or niger appeared in the 16th century as an adaptation of French negre itself from Spanish negro They go back to the Latin adjective niger ˈnɪɡɛr meaning black 1 2 It was initially seen as a relatively neutral term essentially synonymous with the English word negro Rather than demonstrating a hostile meaning of the word itself early attested uses during the Atlantic slave trade 16th 19th century often conveyed a patronizing tone that reflects the underlying attitudes held towards black people by their white authors Building up on these mildly disparaging social meanings the word took on a derogatory connotation from the mid 18th century onward to the extent that it had degenerated into an overt slur by the middle of the 19th century Some authors kept on using the term in a neutral sense up until the later part of the 20th century at which point the use of nigger became increasingly seen as controversial regardless of its context or intent 1 2 3 Because the word nigger has historically wreaked symbolic violence often accompanied by physical violence it began to disappear from general popular culture from the second part of the 20th century onward at the exception of cases derived from intra group usage such as hip hop culture 2 The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary describes the term as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English 2 The Oxford English Dictionary writes that this word is one of the most controversial in English and is liable to be considered offensive or taboo in almost all contexts even when used as a self description 1 Intra group usage has been criticized by some contemporary African American authors a group of them the eradicationists calling for the total abandonment of its usage even under the variant nigga which they see as contributing to the construction of an identity founded on self hate 2 4 5 6 In wider society the inclusion of the word nigger in classic works of literature as in Mark Twain s 1884 book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and in more recent cultural productions such as Quentin Tarantino s 1994 film Pulp Fiction has sparked controversy and ongoing debate 4 6 By extension of its derogatory connotation the word nigger has also been historically used to designate any person considered to be of low social status as in the expression white nigger or any person whose behaviour is regarded as reprehensible and in other national contexts to refer to Aboriginal and Maori people In some cases with awareness of the word s offensive connotation but without intention to cause offense it can refer to a a victim of prejudice likened to that endured by African Americans as in John Lennon s 1972 song Woman Is the Nigger of the World 1 Contents 1 Etymology and history 1 1 Early use 1 2 18th and 19th century United States 1 3 20th century United States 2 Usage 2 1 In names of people places and things 2 2 Political use 2 3 Cultural use 2 4 In an academic setting 2 5 In the workplace 2 6 Intra group versus intergroup usage 2 6 1 2010s increase in use and controversy 3 Related words 3 1 Derivatives 3 2 The N word euphemism 3 3 Similar sounding words 3 4 Denotational extension 3 5 Other languages 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Sources 8 Further readingEtymology and historyMain article Negro Early use The variants neger and negar derive from various Romance words for black including the Spanish and Portuguese word negro black and the now pejorative French negre Etymologically negro noir negre and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum the stem of the Latin niger black In its original English language usage nigger also spelled niger was a word for a dark skinned individual The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574 in a work alluding to the Nigers of Aethiop bearing witnes 7 According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later in 1775 8 In the colonial America of 1619 John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony 9 Later American English spellings neger and neggar prevailed in New York under the Dutch and in metropolitan Philadelphia s Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name Begraafplaats van de Neger Cemetery of the Negro An early occurrence of neger in American English dates from 1625 in Rhode Island 10 Lexicographer Noah Webster suggested the neger spelling in place of negro in his 1806 dictionary 11 18th and 19th century United States Lyrics for the song Run Nigger Run about a fugitive slave escaping from a slave patrol printed in 1851 During the late 18th and early 19th century the word nigger also described an actual labor category which African American laborers adopted for themselves as a social identity and thus white people used the descriptor word as a distancing or derogatory epithet as if quoting black people and their non standard language 12 During the early 1800s to the late 1840s fur trade in the Western United States the word was spelled niggur and is often recorded in the literature of the time George Fredrick Ruxton used it in his mountain man lexicon without pejorative connotation Niggur was evidently similar to the modern use of dude or guy This passage from Ruxton s Life in the Far West illustrates the word in spoken form the speaker here referring to himself Travler marm this niggur s no travler I ar a trapper marm a mountain man wagh 13 It was not used as a term exclusively for blacks among mountain men during this period as Indians Mexicans and Frenchmen and Anglos alike could be a niggur 14 The noun slipped back and forth from derogatory to endearing 15 By 1859 the term was clearly used to offend in an attack on abolitionist John Brown 16 The term colored or negro became a respectful alternative In 1851 the Boston Vigilance Committee an abolitionist organization posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity Writing in 1904 journalist Clifton Johnson documented the opprobrious character of the word nigger emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than colored or negro 17 By the turn of the century colored had become sufficiently mainstream that it was chosen as the racial self identifier for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP In 2008 Carla Sims its communications director said the term colored is not derogatory the NAACP chose the word colored because it was the most positive description commonly used in 1909 when the association was founded It s outdated and antiquated but not offensive 18 Mark Twain in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi 1883 used the term within quotes indicating reported speech but used the term negro when writing in his own narrative persona 19 Joseph Conrad published a novella in Britain with the title The Nigger of the Narcissus 1897 in the United States it was released as The Children of the Sea A Tale of the Forecastle the original had been called the ugliest conceivable title in a British review 20 and American reviewers understood the change as reflecting American refinement and prudery 21 The US edition of Joseph Conrad s The Nigger of the Narcissus was called The Children of the Sea 20th century United States A style guide to British English usage H W Fowler s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage states in the first edition 1926 that applying the word nigger to others than full or partial negroes is felt as an insult by the person described amp betrays in the speaker if not deliberate insolence at least a very arrogant inhumanity but the second edition 1965 states N has been described as the term that carries with it all the obloquy and contempt and rejection which whites have inflicted on blacks 22 The quoted formula goes back to the writings of the American journalist Harold R Isaacs who used it in several writings between 1963 and 1975 23 Black characters in Nella Larsen s 1929 novel Passing view its use as offensive one says I m really not such an idiot that I don t realize that if a man calls me a nigger it s his fault the first time but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again 24 By the late 1960s the social change brought about by the civil rights movement had legitimized the racial identity word Black as mainstream American English usage to denote black skinned Americans of African ancestry President Thomas Jefferson had used this word of his slaves in his Notes on the State of Virginia 1785 but Black had not been widely used until the later 20th century See Black Pride and in the context of worldwide anti colonialism initiatives Negritude In the 1980s the term African American was advanced analogously to the terms German American and Irish American and was adopted by major media outlets Moreover as a compound word African American resembles the vogue word Afro American an early 1970s popular usage Some Black Americans continue to use the word nigger often spelled as nigga and niggah without irony either to neutralize the word s impact or as a sign of solidarity 25 UsageSurveys from 2006 showed that the American public widely perceived usage of the term to be wrong or unacceptable but that nearly half of whites and two thirds of blacks knew someone personally who referred to blacks by the term 26 Nearly one third of whites and two thirds of blacks said they had personally used the term within the last five years 26 In names of people places and things Main article Use of nigger in proper names Political use Historical American cartoon titled Why the nigger is not fit to vote by Thomas Nast arguing the reason Democrats objected to African Americans having the vote was that in the 1868 US presidential election African Americans voted for the Republican candidates Ulysses S Grant and Schuyler Colfax Seymour friends meet here in the background is a reference to the Democratic Party candidate Horatio Seymour Niggers in the White House 27 was written in reaction to an October 1901 White House dinner hosted by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who had invited Booker T Washington an African American presidential advisor as a guest The poem reappeared in 1929 after First Lady Lou Hoover wife of President Herbert Hoover invited Jessie De Priest the wife of African American congressman Oscar De Priest to a tea for congressmen s wives at the White House 28 The identity of the author who used the byline unchained poet remains unknown In explaining his refusal to be conscripted to fight the Vietnam War 1955 75 professional boxer Muhammad Ali said No Vietcong ever called me nigger 29 Later his modified answer was the title of a documentary No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger 1968 about the front line lot of the U S Army Black soldier in combat in Vietnam 30 An Ali biographer reports that when interviewed by Robert Lipsyte in 1966 the boxer actually said I ain t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong 31 On February 28 2007 the New York City Council symbolically banned the use of the word nigger however there is no penalty for using it This formal resolution also requests excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word however Ron Roecker vice president of communication for the Recording Academy doubted it will have any effect on actual nominations 32 33 The word can be invoked politically for effect When Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick came under intense scrutiny for his conduct in 2008 he deviated from an address to the city council saying In the past 30 days I ve been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life Opponents accused him of playing the race card to save his political life 34 Cultural use Main article Use of nigger in the arts The implicit racism of the word nigger has generally rendered its use taboo Magazines and newspapers typically do not use this word but instead print censored versions such as n gg r n ger n or the N word 35 see below 1885 illustration from Mark Twain s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn captioned Misto Bradish s nigger The use of nigger in older literature has become controversial because of the word s modern meaning as a racist insult One of the most enduring controversies has been the word s use in Mark Twain s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885 Huckleberry Finn was the fifth most challenged book during the 1990s according to the American Library Association 36 The novel is written from the point of view and largely in the language of an uneducated white boy who is drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft with an adult escaped slave Jim The word nigger is used mostly about Jim over 200 times 37 38 Twain s advocates note that the novel is composed in then contemporary vernacular usage not racist stereotype because Jim the black man is a sympathetic character In 2011 a new edition published by NewSouth Books replaced the word nigger with slave and also removed the word injun The change was spearheaded by Twain scholar Alan Gribben in the hope of countering the pre emptive censorship that results from the book s being removed from school curricula over language concerns 39 40 The changes sparked outrage from critics Elon James Alexandra Petri and Chris Meadows 41 In his 1999 memoir All Souls Irish American Michael Patrick MacDonald describes how many white residents of the Old Colony Housing Project in South Boston used this meaning to degrade the people considered to be of lower status whether white or black 42 Of course no one considered himself a nigger It was always something you called someone who could be considered anything less than you I soon found out there were a few black families living in Old Colony They d lived there for years and everyone said that they were okay that they weren t niggers but just black It felt good to all of us to not be as bad as the hopeless people in D Street or God forbid the ones in Columbia Point who were both black and niggers But now I was jealous of the kids in Old Harbor Project down the road which seemed like a step up from Old Colony In an academic setting The word s usage in literature has led to it being a point of discussion in university lectures as well In 2008 Arizona State University English professor Neal A Lester created what has been called the first ever college level class designed to explore the word nigger 43 Starting in the following decade colleges struggled with attempts to teach material about the slur in a sensitive manner In 2012 a sixth grade Chicago teacher Lincoln Brown was suspended after repeating the contents of a racially charged note being passed around in class Brown later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the headmaster and the Chicago public schools 44 A New Orleans high school also experienced controversy in 2017 45 Such increased attention prompted Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor the daughter of Richard Pryor and a professor at Smith College to give a talk opining that the word was leading to a social crisis in higher education 46 In addition to Smith College Emory University Augsburg University Southern Connecticut State University and Simpson College all suspended professors in 2019 over referring to the word nigger by name in classroom settings 47 48 49 In two other cases a professor at Princeton decided to stop teaching a course on hate speech after students protested his utterance of nigger and a professor at DePaul had his law course cancelled after 80 of the enrolled students transferred out 50 51 Instead of pursuing disciplinary action a student at the College of the Desert challenged his professor in a viral class presentation which argued that her use of the word in a lecture was not justified 52 In the workplace In 2018 the head of the media company Netflix Reed Hastings fired his chief communications officer Jonathan Friedland for using the word twice during internal discussions about sensitive words 53 In explaining why Hastings wrote The word s use in popular media like music and film have created some confusion as to whether or not there is ever a time when the use of the N word is acceptable For non Black people the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive even when singing a song or reading a script There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context The use of the phrase N word was created as a euphemism and the norm with the intention of providing an acceptable replacement and moving people away from using the specific word When a person violates this norm it creates resentment intense frustration and great offense for many 54 The following year screenwriter Walter Mosley turned down a job after his human resources department took issue with him using the word to describe racism that he experienced as a black man 55 While defending Laurie Sheck a professor who was cleared of ethical violations for quoting I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin John McWhorter wrote that efforts to condemn racist language by white Americans had undergone mission creep 56 Similar controversies outside the United States have occurred at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and the Madrid campus of Syracuse University 57 58 In June 2020 Canadian news host Wendy Mesley was suspended and replaced with a guest host after she attended a meeting on racial justice and in the process of quoting a journalist used a word that no one like me should ever use 59 In August 2020 BBC news with the agreement of victim and family mentioned the slur when reporting on a physical and verbal assault on the black NHS worker and musician K Dogg Within the week the BBC received over 18 600 complaints the black radio host David Whitely resigned in protest and the BBC apologized 60 In 2021 in Tampa Florida a 27 year old black employee at a Dunkin Donuts punched a 77 year old white customer after the customer had repeatedly called the employee a nigger 61 The customer fell to the floor and hit his head Three days later he died having suffered a skull fracture and brain contusions The employee was arrested and charged with manslaughter In a plea bargain the employee pled guilty to felony battery and was sentenced to two years of house arrest In 2022 in explaining why the employee did not receive any jail time Grayson Kamm a spokesman for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said Two of the primary factors were the aggressive approach the victim took toward the defendant and everyone working with the defendant and that the victim repeatedly used possibly the most aggressive and offensive term in the English language 62 Intra group versus intergroup usage Main article Nigga See also Ingroups and outgroups Black listeners often react to the term differently depending on whether it is used by white speakers or by Black speakers In the former case it is regularly understood as insensitive or insulting in the latter it may carry notes of in group disparagement and is often understood as neutral or affectionate a possible instance of reappropriation 63 In the Black community nigger is often rendered as nigga This usage has been popularized by the rap and hip hop music cultures and is used as part of an in group lexicon and speech It is not necessarily derogatory and is often used to mean homie or friend 64 Acceptance of intra group usage of the word nigga is still debated 64 although it has established a foothold amongst younger generations The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger Usage of nigga by mixed race individuals is still largely considered taboo a albeit not as inflammatory as nigger As of 2001 trends indicated that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even amongst white youth due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture 65 Linguist Keith Allan rejects the view that nigger is always a slur arguing that it is also used as a marker of camaraderie and friendship comparable to the British and Australian term mate or the American buddy 66 According to Arthur K Spears in Diverse Issues in Higher Education 2006 In many African American neighborhoods nigga is simply the most common term used to refer to any male of any race or ethnicity Increasingly the term has been applied to any person male or female Where y all niggas goin is said with no self consciousness or animosity to a group of women for the routine purpose of obtaining information The point nigga is evaluatively neutral in terms of its inherent meaning it may express positive neutral or negative attitudes 67 Kevin Cato meanwhile observes For instance a show on Black Entertainment Television a cable network aimed at a Black audience described the word nigger as a term of endearment In the African American community the word nigga not nigger brings out feelings of pride Davis 1 Here the word evokes a sense of community and oneness among Black people Many teens I interviewed felt the word had no power when used amongst friends but when used among white people the word took on a completely different meaning In fact comedian Alex Thomas on BET stated I still better not hear no white boy say that to me I hear a white boy say that to me it means White boy you gonna get your ass beat 68 Addressing the use of nigger by Black people philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West said in 2007 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 69 2010s increase in use and controversy In the 2010s nigger in its various forms saw use with increasing frequency by African Americans amongst themselves or in self expression the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics 70 71 Ta Nehisi Coates suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for non Blacks to utter while singing or rapping along to hip hop and that by being so restrained it gives white Americans specifically an impression of what it is like to not be entitled to do anything they please anywhere A concern often raised is whether frequent exposure will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non Black Americans who currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking 72 Related wordsDerivatives Anti abolitionist cartoon from the 1860 presidential campaign illustrating colloquial usage of Nigger in the woodpile In several English speaking countries Niggerhead or nigger head was used as a name for many sorts of things including commercial products places plants and animals as a descriptive term lit Black person s head It also is or was a colloquial technical term in industry mining and seafaring Nigger as defect a hidden problem derives from nigger in the woodpile a US slave era phrase denoting escaped slaves hiding in train transported woodpiles 73 In the 1840s the Morning Chronicle newspaper report series London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew records the usages of both nigger and the similar sounding word niggard denoting a false bottom for a grate 74 In American English nigger lover initially applied to abolitionists then to white people sympathetic towards Black Americans 75 The portmanteau word wigger White nigger denotes a white person emulating street Black behavior hoping to gain acceptance to the hip hop thug and gangsta sub cultures Norman Mailer wrote of the antecedents of this phenomenon in 1957 in his essay The White Negro The N word euphemism Notable usage 76 The prosecutor Christopher Darden his voice trembling added that the N word was so vile he would not utter it It s the filthiest dirtiest nastiest word in the English language Kenneth B Noble January 14 1995 The New York Times 77 The euphemism the N word became mainstream American English usage during the racially contentious O J Simpson murder case in 1995 citation needed Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman of the Los Angeles Police Department who denied using racist language on duty impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his police work The recordings by screenplay writer Laura McKinney were from a 1985 research session wherein the detective assisted her with a screenplay about LAPD policewomen Fuhrman excused his use of the word saying he used nigger in the context of his bad cop persona Media personnel who reported on Fuhrman s testimony substituted the N word for nigger citation needed Similar sounding words Niger Latin for black occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger sellers of niger seed used as bird feed sometimes use the spelling Nyjer seed The classical Latin pronunciation ˈniɡeɾ sounds similar to the English ˈnɪɡer occurring in biologic and anatomic names such as Hyoscyamus niger black henbane and even for animals that are in fact not black such as Sciurus niger fox squirrel Nigra is the Latin feminine form of niger black used in biologic and anatomic names such as substantia nigra black substance The word niggardly miserly is etymologically unrelated to nigger derived from the Old Norse word nig stingy and the Middle English word nigon In the US this word has been misinterpreted as related to nigger and taken as offensive In January 1999 David Howard a white Washington D C city employee was compelled to resign after using niggardly in a financial context while speaking with Black colleagues who took umbrage After reviewing the misunderstanding Mayor Anthony A Williams offered to reinstate Howard to his former position Howard refused reinstatement but took a job elsewhere in the mayor s government 78 Denotational extension Graffiti in Palestine referring to Arabs as sand niggers The denotations of nigger also include non Black non White and other disadvantaged people Some of these terms are self chosen to identify with the oppression and resistance of Black Americans others are ethnic slurs used by outsiders Jerry Farber s 1967 essay collection The Student as Nigger used the word as a metaphor for what he saw as the role forced on students Farber had been at the time frequently arrested as a civil rights activist while beginning his career as a literature professor In his 1968 autobiography White Niggers of America The Precocious Autobiography of a Quebec Terrorist Pierre Vallieres a Front de liberation du Quebec leader refers to the oppression of the Quebecois people in North America In 1969 in the course of being interviewed by the British magazine Nova artist Yoko Ono said woman is the nigger of the world three years later her husband John Lennon published the song of the same name about the worldwide phenomenon of discrimination against women which was socially and politically controversial to US sensibilities Sand nigger an ethnic slur against Arabs and timber nigger and prairie nigger ethnic slurs against Native Americans are examples of the racist extension of nigger upon other non white peoples 79 In 1978 singer Patti Smith used the word in Rock N Roll Nigger In 1979 English singer Elvis Costello used the phrase white nigger in Oliver s Army a song describing the experiences of working class soldiers in the British military forces on the murder mile Belfast during The Troubles where white nigger was a common British pejorative for Irish Catholics Later when the producers of the British talent show Stars in Their Eyes forced a contestant to censor one of its lines changing all it takes is one itchy trigger One more widow one less white nigger to one less white figure citation needed Historian Eugene Genovese noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power class and relations between planters and slaves in the South uses the word pointedly in The World the Slaveholders Made 1988 For reasons common to the slave condition all slave classes displayed a lack of industrial initiative and produced the famous Lazy Nigger who under Russian serfdom and elsewhere was white Just as not all Blacks even under the most degrading forms of slavery consented to become niggers so by no means all or even most of the niggers in history have been Black The editor of Green Egg a magazine described in The Encyclopedia of American Religions as a significant periodical published an essay entitled Niggers of the New Age This argued that Neo Pagans were treated badly by other parts of the New Age movement 80 Other languages Other languages particularly Romance languages have words that sound similar to or share etymological roots with nigger but do not necessarily mean the same In some of these languages the words refer to the color black in general and are not specifically used to refer to black people When used to refer to black people these words have acquired varying degrees of offensiveness ranging from completely neutral as in Spanish negro to highly racist as in Finnish Neekeri Examples of related words in other languages include Dutch Neger Negro used to be neutral but many now consider it to be avoided in favor of zwarte Black 81 82 83 84 Zwartje little black one can be amicably or offensively used Nikker is always pejorative 85 Finnish Neekeri Negro nigger as a loan word Neger from the Swedish language appeared for the first time in a book published in 1771 86 The use of the Finnish equivalent neekeri began in the late 19th century Until the 1980s it was commonly used and generally not yet considered derogatory although a few instances of it being considered to be so have been documented since the 1950s by the mid 1990s the word was considered racist especially in the metropolitan area and among the younger population 87 It has since then usually been replaced by the metonym musta Black person 88 In a survey conducted in 2000 Finnish respondents considered the term Neekeri to be among the most offensive of minority designations 89 French Negre is now considered derogatory Although Negre litteraire was the standard term for a ghostwriter it has largely been supplanted by prete plume Some white Frenchmen have the surname Negre The word can still be used as a synonym of sweetheart in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs German Neger is dated and now considered offensive Schwarze r Black person or Farbige r colored person is more neutral Haitian Creole neg is used for any man in general regardless of skin color like dude in American English Haitian Creole derives predominantly from French Italian has three variants negro nero and di colore The first one is the most historically attested and was the most commonly used until the 1960s as an equivalent of the English word negro It was gradually felt as offensive during the 1970s and replaced with nero and di colore Nero was considered a better translation of the English word black while di colore is a loan translation of the English word colored 90 Portuguese Negro as well as preto is neutral 91 nevertheless preto can be offensive or at least politically incorrect and is almost never proudly used by Afro Brazilians Crioulo and macaco are always extremely pejorative 92 Russian the word negr negr has been commonly used to describe Black people It can also be used as a synonym for underpaid worker literaturnyj negr literaturny negr means ghostwriter 93 94 95 Negrityonok negrityonok means a negro child For example the mystery novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie originally called Ten Little Niggers is known in Russia as Desyat negrityat dyesyt negrityat In the 16th and 17th centuries the word mavr moor was used to describe people with dark skin Nowadays a black person would often be described neutrally as chernokozhij literally black skinned The word chyornyj chornyi black is often used as a derogatory word for peoples of the Caucasus and less often Black people Spanish Negro is the word for black and is the only way to refer to that color 96 See alsoList of ethnic slurs List of ethnic group names used as insults Kaffir ethnic slur Blackfella Guilty or Innocent of Using the N Word a 2006 documentary List of topics related to Black and African people With Apologies to Jesse Jackson an episode of South Park with a plot revolving around the word s extreme offensiveness GolliwogNotes Whether this usage is considered acceptable may depend on a sense of the speaker s in group belonging as judged by the speaker him or herself the listener s or others References a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online s v nigger n and adj neger n and adj N word n a b c d e f Rahman Jacquelyn 2012 The N Word Its History and Use in the African American Community Journal of English Linguistics 40 2 137 171 doi 10 1177 0075424211414807 ISSN 0075 4242 S2CID 144164210 McWhorter John April 30 2021 Opinion How the N Word Became Unsayable via NYTimes com a b Kennedy Randall 2002 Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word Pantheon Books pp 36 37 91 111 ISBN 978 0 9650397 7 2 Asim Jabari 2008 The N Word Who Can Say It Who Shouldn t and Why HMH ISBN 978 0 547 52494 8 a b Allan Keith 2015 When is a Slur Not a Slur The Use of Nigger in Pulp Fiction Language Sciences 52 187 199 doi 10 1016 j langsci 2015 03 001 Patricia T O Conner Stewart Kellerman 2010 Origins of the Specious Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language Random House Publishing Group p 134 ISBN 978 0 8129 7810 0 Retrieved August 18 2017 Peterson Christopher 2013 Bestial Traces Race Sexuality Animality Race Sexuality Animality Fordham Univ Press p 91 ISBN 978 0 8232 4520 8 Retrieved August 18 2017 Kennedy Randall January 11 2001 Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word The Washington Post Retrieved August 17 2007 Book review Hutchinson Earl Ofari 1996 The Assassination of the Black Male Image Simon and Schuster p 82 ISBN 978 0 684 83100 8 Mencken H L 1921 Chapter 8 American Spelling gt 2 The Influence of Webster The American Language An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States 2nd rev and enl ed New York A A Knopf Stordeur Pryor Elizabeth Summer 2016 The Etymology of Nigger Resistance Language and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North Journal of the Early Republic 36 2 203 245 doi 10 1353 jer 2016 0028 S2CID 148122937 Retrieved February 26 2021 Stordeur Pryor Elizabeth Summer 2016 The Etymology of Nigger Resistance Language and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North Smith ScholarWorks Northampton Massachusetts Smith College 203 245 especially 206 f Retrieved February 26 2021 Ruxton George Frederick 1846 Life In the Far West University of Oklahoma Press ISBN 978 0 8061 1534 4 Language of the Rendezvous Archived from the original on November 19 2012 Retrieved September 6 2012 Coleman Jon 2012 Here Lies Hugh Glass A Mountain Man a Bear and the Rise of the American Nation Macmillan p 272 Retrieved November 21 2016 permanent dead link A new version of an old song Illustrating the growth of Public Sentiment Old John Brown he had a little nigger The National Era Washington D C November 10 1859 p 3 via newspapers com Johnson Clifton October 14 1904 They Are Only Niggers in the South The Seattle Republican Seattle Wash Republican Pub Co Retrieved January 23 2011 Lohan calls Obama colored NAACP says no big deal Mercury News November 12 2008 Twain Mark 1883 Life on the Mississippi Academic Medicine Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges Vol 75 James R Osgood amp Co Boston U S edition p 11 13 127 139 219 doi 10 1097 00001888 200010000 00016 ISBN 978 0 486 41426 3 PMID 11031147 GOONETILLEKE D C R A 2011 Racism and The Nigger of the Narcissus Conradiana 43 2 3 51 66 ISSN 0010 6356 JSTOR 24669418 RUDE DONALD W DAVIS KENNETH W 1992 The Critical Reception of the First American Edition of The Nigger of the Narcissus The Conradian 16 2 46 56 ISSN 0951 2314 JSTOR 20874005 Henry W Fowler Ernest Gowers A Dictionary of Modern English Usage Oxford University Press 1965 Compare the entry nigger n in Online etymology dictionary Harold R Isaacs in Encounter vol 21 1963 p 9 Google Books Compare Harold R Isaacs Idols of the Tribe Group Identity and Political Change Harvard University Press 1989 p 88 Google Books Sullivan Nell 1998 Nella Larsen s Passing and the Fading Subject African American Review 32 3 373 386 doi 10 2307 3042239 ISSN 1062 4783 JSTOR 3042239 Allan Keith June 2007 The pragmatics of connotation Journal of Pragmatics 39 6 1047 1057 doi 10 1016 j pragma 2006 08 004 a b Tesler Michael June 25 2015 Using the n word is more common than you or President Obama may think The Washington Post Retrieved August 15 2018 Niggers in the White House Theodore Roosevelt Center Dickinson State University Retrieved September 12 2013 Jones Stephen A Freedman Eric 2011 Presidents and Black America A Documentary History Los Angeles CQ Press p 349 ISBN 9781608710089 Kennedy Randall 2002 Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word Random House p 28 ISBN 978 0 375 42172 3 Rollins Peter C 2003 The Columbia Companion to American History on Film How the Movies Have Portrayed the American Past Columbia UP p 341 ISBN 978 0 231 11222 2 Lemert Charles 2003 Muhammad Ali Trickster in the Culture of Irony Wiley Blackwell pp 105 107 ISBN 978 0 7456 2871 4 Pilkington Ed March 1 2007 New York city council bans use of the N word The Guardian Retrieved August 17 2007 Res No 693 A Resolution declaring the NYC Council s symbolic moratorium against using the N word in New York City New York City Council Retrieved August 17 2007 French Ron March 13 2008 Attorney General Cox Kilpatrick should resign The Detroit News Retrieved March 13 2008 dead link Nigger Usage Alert dictionary com Retrieved July 23 2015 100 most frequently challenged books 1990 1999 ala org March 27 2013 Archived from the original on January 12 2012 Retrieved April 2 2011 Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn The Complete Works of Mark Twain Archived from the original on September 9 2006 Retrieved March 12 2006 Academic Resources Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word Random House Archived from the original on January 22 2007 Retrieved March 13 2006 Alt URL Archived July 15 2020 at the Wayback Machine Page Benedicte January 5 2011 New Huckleberry Finn edition censors n word The Guardian Retrieved February 2 2021 Twain Mark January 7 2011 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Removing the N Word from Huck Finn Top 10 Censored Books Time Archived from the original on January 10 2011 Retrieved January 23 2011 Kehe Marjorie January 5 2011 The n word gone from Huck Finn what would Mark Twain say The Christian Science Monitor Retrieved February 2 2021 MacDonald Michael Patrick 2000 All Souls A Family Story from Southie Random House Inc p 61 ISBN 978 0 345 44177 5 Price Sean 2011 Straight talk about the N word Teaching Tolerance Retrieved November 18 2019 Kaminer Wendy February 21 2012 Can educators ever teach the N word The Atlantic Retrieved December 24 2021 O Sullivan Donie May 5 2017 School reflects on race after student teacher N word exchange CNN Retrieved November 19 2019 Moulton Cyrus September 19 2019 Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor says use of the N word is causing social crisis Telegram amp Gazette Retrieved November 18 2019 Patrice Joe October 4 2019 The original Emory Law School N word using professor faces hearing on his future today Above The Law Retrieved November 18 2019 Stein Matthew April 11 2019 Universities repeatedly discipline professors for referring to the n word The College Fix Retrieved November 18 2019 Flaherty Colleen November 18 2019 Professor won t teach more classes after saying N word Inside Higher Education Retrieved November 18 2019 Dwyer Colin February 13 2018 Professor cancels course on hate speech amid contention over his use of slur NPR Retrieved November 19 2019 Lee Ella September 23 2019 Professor formerly under fire for use of N word in teaching exercise back at DePaul The DePaulia Retrieved November 19 2019 Harvard Sarah March 7 2019 College student delivers presentation to call out professor for using n word in class The Independent Archived from the original on June 20 2022 Retrieved November 18 2019 Mele Christopher June 23 2018 Netflix Fires Chief Communications Officer Over Use of Racial Slur The New York Times Retrieved June 23 2018 Landy Heather June 23 2018 Read the Netflix CEO s excellent memo about firing an executive who used the N word Quartz at Work Retrieved June 23 2018 Mosley Walter September 6 2019 Why I quit the writer s room The New York Times Retrieved September 19 2019 McWhorter John August 21 2019 The idea that white s can t refer to the N word The Atlantic Retrieved November 19 2019 Lebel Jacquelyn October 28 2019 Western University professor apologizes after student calls out his use of the n word Global News Retrieved November 19 2019 Leffert Catherine March 13 2019 Students professor use N word during class at SU s Madrid program The Daily Orange Retrieved November 19 2019 Calabrese Darren June 9 2020 CBC host Wendy Mesley apologizes for using a certain word in discussion on race The Canadian Press Retrieved June 13 2020 BBC apologises over racial slur used in news report BBC News August 9 2020 Retrieved August 26 2020 Dan Sullivan Tampa Dunkin case A racial slur a fatal punch and 2 years of house arrest Tampabay com Retrieved September 25 2022 Florida Dunkin employee is sentenced for fatally punching customer who used racist slur CBS News March 9 2022 Retrieved August 14 2022 Brontsema Robin June 1 2004 A Queer Revolution Reconceptualizing the Debate Over Linguistic Reclamation Colorado Research in Linguistics 17 1 doi 10 25810 dky3 zq57 ISSN 1937 7029 Linguistic reclamation also known as linguistic resignification or reappropriation refers to the appropriation of a pejorative epithet by its target s a b Nigga Usage Alert dictionary com Retrieved July 23 2015 Aldridge Kevin Thompson Richelle Winston Earnest August 5 2001 The evolving N word The Cincinnati Enquirer Archived from the original on January 10 2013 Retrieved October 14 2011 Allan Keith November 2015 When is a slur not a slur The use of nigger in Pulp Fiction Language Sciences 52 187 199 doi 10 1016 j langsci 2015 03 001 Spears Dr Arthur K July 12 2006 Perspectives A View of the N Word from Sociolinguistics Diverse Issues in Higher Education Nigger Wrt intertext syr edu Archived from the original on May 17 2011 Retrieved January 23 2011 Mohr Tim November 2007 Cornel West Talks Rhymes and Race Playboy 54 11 44 Sheinin Dave Thompson Krissah November 9 2014 Redefining the Word The Washington Post Retrieved May 24 2019 Profanity in lyrics most used swear words and their usage by popular genres Musixmatch December 16 2015 Retrieved May 24 2019 Bain Marc November 13 2017 Ta Nehisi Coates Gently Explains Why White People Can t Rap the N Word Quartz Retrieved May 24 2019 The Oxford English Reference Dictionary 2nd ed 1996 p 981 vol 2 p6 Herbst Philip 1997 The Color of Words An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States Intercultural Press p 166 ISBN 978 1 877864 97 1 via Google Books Arac Jonathan November 1997 Huckleberry Finn as idol and target Madison Wisconsin University of Wisconsin Press p 29 ISBN 978 0 299 15534 6 Retrieved August 18 2010 Noble Kenneth B January 14 1995 Issue of Racism Erupts in Simpson Trial The New York Times Retrieved February 2 2021 Woodlee Yolanda February 4 1999 D C Mayor Acted Hastily Will Rehire Aide The Washington Post Retrieved August 17 2007 Kennedy Randall L Winter 1999 2000 Who Can Say Nigger And Other Considerations The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 26 86 96 87 doi 10 2307 2999172 JSTOR 2999172 G Zell Otter 2009 Green Egg Omelette An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal p 209 ISBN 978 1601630469 Waarom wil je ons zo graag neger noemen joop nl 25 mei 2014 Neger zwarte Taaltelefoon Style guide of de Volkskrant Volkskrant stijlboek Volkskrant Volkskrant Retrieved December 14 2016 Style guide of NRC Handelsblad Stijlboek NRC handelsblad Retrieved December 14 2016 Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse taal 2010 Jussila Raimo 1998 Vanhat sanat Vanhan kirjasuomen ensiesiintymia in Finnish Helsinki Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus pp 170 365 ISBN 951 746 008 2 Rastas Anna 2007 Neutraalisti rasistinen Eraan sanan politiikkaa Rasismi lasten ja nuorten arjessa Transnationaalit juuret ja monikulttuuristuva Suomi in Finnish Tampere Tampere University Press ISBN 978 951 44 6946 6 Pietikainen Sari 2002 Etniset vahemmistot uutisissa In Raittila Pentti ed Etnisyys ja rasismi journalismissa Tampere Tampere University Press pp 25 26 ISBN 951 44 5486 3 Tervonen Satu 2001 Etnisten nimitysten eri savyt Kielikello in Finnish Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus 1 2001 Accademia della Crusca Nero negro e di colore 12 ottobre 2012 IT Archived from the original on September 30 2019 Retrieved September 30 2019 Tabela 1 2 Populacao residente por cor ou raca segundo a situacao do domicilio e o sexo Brasil 2009 PDF Archived from the original PDF on September 24 2015 and Evolutio da populaco brasileira segundo a cor 1872 1991 Archived from the original on December 21 2010 G1 gt Edicao Rio de Janeiro NOTICIAS Sou incapaz de qualquer atitude racista diz procurador g1 globo com Retrieved October 9 2019 Ozhegov Sergeĭ Ivanovich Ozhegov Sergej Ivanovich 2014 Tolkovyĭ slovarʹ russkogo i a zyka okolo 100 000 slov terminov i frazeologicheskikh vyrazheniĭ Skvort s ov Lev Ivanovich Skvorcov Lev Ivanovich 28 e izd ispravlennoe ed Moskva ISBN 978 5 94666 678 7 OCLC 1041202243 Latyshi i gosti stolicy www kommersant ru in Russian August 29 2000 Retrieved March 8 2021 Pisateli prizraki newizv ru Retrieved March 8 2021 ASALE RAE RAE negro negra Diccionario de la lengua espanola Diccionario de la lengua espanola Edicion del Tricentenario in Spanish Retrieved February 1 2023 Sources nigger The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed 1989 Fuller Neely Jr 1984 The United Independent Compensatory Code System Concept A Textbook Workbook for Thought Speech and or Action for Victims of Racism white supremacy ASIN B000BVZW38 Kennedy Randall 2002 Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word New York Pantheon Books ISBN 978 0 375 42172 3 Smith Stephanie 2005 Household Words Bloomers Sucker Bombshell Scab Nigger Cyber Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press ISBN 978 0 8166 4552 7 Swan Robert J 2003 New Amsterdam Gehenna Segregated Death in New York City 1630 1801 Brooklyn Noir Verite Press ISBN 978 0 9722813 0 0 Worth Robert F Fall 1995 Nigger Heaven and the Harlem Renaissance African American Review 29 3 461 473 doi 10 2307 3042395 JSTOR 3042395 Further reading Look up nigger or N word in Wiktionary the free dictionary Asim Jabari 2007 The N Word who can say it who shouldn t and why Boston Houghton Mifflin Company ISBN 978 0 618 19717 0 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Nigger amp oldid 1152759744, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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