Nigger

Nigger is an extremely controversial term used in many English-speaking countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia (but also in other languages such as German as a loanword) to refer to people of African descent. During the chattel enslavement of Africans, it was once the standard, casual English term for black people. Associations with the word traditionally have been an institutional contempt, a presumption of inherent inferiority, even of bestiality, making it extremely pejorative and abusive.

The word "nigger" originates from the Dutch and German "neger," which is their orthography and phonetics for the Portuguese and Spanish "negro." The English distorted neger to "negar" to "nigger." "Neger" (sometimes spelled "neggar") prevailed in the North in New York under the Dutch and in Philadelphia in the Moravian and "Pennsylvania Dutch" [German] communities. For example, the New York City "African Burial Ground" was originally known as "Begraaf Plaats van de Neger." It acquired its offensive and dehumanizing character from the confluence of Catholic and Protestant religious doctrine of nations engaged in slavery and, in America, the American Revolution, which could not admit to black equality, even after freedom. Thus, after the Revolution nigger became a racial epithet, a word of hatred, for the black presence in "white" America.

Historically, African Americans have appropriated the slur, subverting it to a self-referential term that is often suggestive of familiarity, endearment, or kinship. When spelled phonetically, the word often was represented as nigguh; however, currently, when used in this manner, the spelling is often changed to nigga or niggah. In general the word is accepted as being racist and dehumanizing.

Modern meanings

Nigger is pejorative and widely considered inappropriate. Several American English dictionaries have labeled it a vulgarism, and the term may refer also to anyone regarded as inferior or of subordinate status. Its use to refer to a person who is considered backward, despised, or powerless, regardless of race, is evident in author Jerry Farber's The Student as Nigger, Pierre Vallières' White Niggers of North America and former Beatle John Lennon's song "Woman is the Nigger of the World".

Previously used by blacks in primarily intra-ethnic settings, nigga as a socially acceptable term of kinship or endearment has become increasingly common among some black American youth and those who wish to emulate media-popularized images of African-American culture. For example: "Nigga" may be acceptable when spoken by one black to another, but is not generally accepted by blacks across racial, socioeconomic or generational bounds. The commercialization and subsequent proliferation of hip-hop culture internationally, for better or worse, have returned the term to broader public use across ethnicities as an artifact of hip-hop culture. This, however, is not to be confused with public acceptance of the term by blacks.

Problems with this use of nigga are illustrated in the comedy-drama movie Gridlock'd (1997), which features the use of the word in its affectionate sense by a white character (played by Tim Roth). He is close enough to his black friend (played by Tupac Shakur) for it to go unremarked, but later he uses it when there are other blacks around whom he does not know so well, causing a dramatic reaction. Nigger (or more commonly Wigger, a portmanteau of "white" and "nigger") is also sometimes used as a pejorative to refer to caucasians who adopt certain aspects of hip-hop culture.

Among other ethnicities, some use it, as an archaism, to refer to people of African descent. Nigger also persists in use as a racial slur among non-blacks across ethnic and class boundaries.

Uses of word

"In 1600 I was a darkie, until 1865 a slave. In 1900, I was a nigger, or at least that was my name. In 1960, I was a negro..." —Gil Scott-Heron, Evolution (and Flashback), 1999.

Usage

In the United States, the word was freely, if sometimes fraughtly, used by both whites and blacks until the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. A striking usage is in televised coverage of a march in Birmingham, Alabama, when protesters, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, were met with attack dogs and fire hoses. A white woman from another Alabama county was interviewed. Visibly upset, she said, "It's not right. We don't treat niggers like that here." Louisiana Governor Earl Long also used the term when advocating expanded voting rights for African Americans. At that time, the term was less noteworthy than the expressions of support by white southerners, as it was a common regional term for blacks, along with "Negro" and "colored".

Today, the implied racism of the term is so strong that the use of nigger in most situations is a social taboo in English-speaking countries. Many American magazines and newspapers will not even print the word in full, instead using "n*gg*r", "n——", or simply "the N-word". A Washington Post article on Strom Thurmond's 1948 candidacy for President of the United States went so far as to replace it with the periphrasis "the less-refined word for black people". The word was also completely excised from the Microsoft Encarta dictionary, despite its common usage. The shock effect of the word also has been used to deliberately cause offense, as in the name of the Internet trolling group, the Gay Nigger Association of America.

In Australia, the word is now rarely used in polite speech by urban whites in any context; however, it has seen common use in rural or semi-frontier districts. In this context, the usage was British colonial, that is, applying generically to dark-skinned people of any origin (c.v. Rudyard Kipling). This has led to controversy, since Australian Aborigines have started to take the term strongly to heart, in both the pejorative and revisionist senses. See below under Place names.

Literary uses

Nigger has a long history of controversy in literature. Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer famous as a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, provoked debate and some protest from the African American community by titling his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven. The uproar centered on the use of the word in the title and fueled the sales of the hit novel. Of the controversy, Langston Hughes wrote:

No book could possibly be as bad as Nigger Heaven has been painted. And no book has ever been better advertised by those who wished to damn it. Because it was declared obscene, everybody wanted to read it, and I'll venture to say that more Negroes bought it than ever purchased a book by a Negro author. Then, as now, the use of the word "nigger" by a white was a flashpoint for debates about the relationship between African American culture and its White patrons.

The famous controversy over Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a classic frequently taught in American schools, revolves largely around the novel's 215 uses of the word, referring to Jim, Huck's raft mate.

Nigger in the Window is a book written by a young black girl that describes the world from her window.

Slaves often pandered to racist assumptions about blacks by using the term to their advantage as a self-deprecatory artifice of Tomming. Implicit in so doing was the unspoken reminder that a presumed inherently morally or intellectually inferior person or subhuman -- in essence, a "nigger" -- could not reasonably be held responsible for work performed incorrectly, an "accidental" fire in the kitchen, or any other similar offense. It was a means of deflecting responsibility in the hope of escaping the wrath of an overseer or master. Its use as a self-referential term was also a way to avoid suspicion and put whites at ease. A slave who referred to himself or another black as a "nigger" presumably accepted the subordinate role that was his unfortunate lot and, therefore, posed no threat to white authority.

An example of this historical use in American English occurs in Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Gold Bug (1843). The narrator and a white character in the story use negro to refer to a black servant, Jupiter, while Jupiter himself uses nigger.

A popular children's rhyme once contained the word nigger instead of tiger (and still does in Britain and Ireland, although many children would be unaware of the meaning of the word). See: Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None, also known as Ten Little Indians, originally appeared as Ten Little Niggers. Among the classic novels of [Joseph Conrad]] is The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897).

Other examples of literary usage in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries suggest a more neutral usage of the term, which can cause a problem when reading such books today when the word has such an offensive meaning.

In the original version of their operetta “The Mikado” by Gilbert and Sullivan The Mikado in his song “Make the Punishment fit the Crime” used the line “Blacked like a nigger/ With permanent walnut juice” when describing the appropriate punishment for an overly madeup society lady. The phrase caused no reaction in London, but raised enough ire on the opening night in the USA that the line was changed to “Painted with vigour/ And permanent walnut juice”.

The “Scarlet Pimpernel” contains a black character referred to casually as a “nigger”, in a way which suggests no serious insult is intended.

In one John Buchan novel the hero goes into a night club in the early 1920’s, where “a rather good nigger band” is playing.

It has been suggested that the USA usage became more prevalent in Great Britain during and after the Second World War. Whether this is through contact with American troops or whether it reflects a growing racism in UK society is open to question.

Nigger in popular culture

At one time, the word was used freely in branding and packaging of consumer commodities in the U.S. and England. There were brands such as Nigger Hair Tobacco, Niggerhead Oysters, and other canned goods. Brazil nuts casually were referred to as "nigger toes". As times changed, so did labeling practices. The tobacco brand became "Bigger Hare", and the canned goods brand became "Negro Head". Eventually, such names disappeared from the marketplace altogether.

The comedian and activist Dick Gregory used the word as the title of his best-selling autobiography in 1964. In 1967, Muhammad Ali explained his refusal to be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War by saying, "I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me 'nigger,'". In 1972, John Lennon released a song, "Woman is the Nigger of the World", the title of which implied that women were more universally oppressed than black people. During the same year, Curtis Mayfield used the "N" word in the first verse of "Pusherman" (a hit song from the Superfly soundtrack). Pierre Vallières, a founding member of the FLQ terrorist group, wrote a book in 1968 called Les Nègres blancs de l'Amérique, comparing the oppression of French-Canadians to that of blacks in the southern United States. When it was translated into English, it was published under the title White Niggers of America.

Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce used the word repeatedly in a comedy routine, suggesting that the more it was used and heard, the less power it would have. Richard Pryor, whose albums included That Nigger's Crazy and Bicentennial Nigger, vowed to never use the word again after a trip to Africa in the 1980s. Commenting that he never saw any niggers while in Africa, Pryor said he realized that niggers were figments of white people's imaginations.

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Hip-hop group N.W.A.

In 1988, hip hop group N.W.A. ("Niggaz With Attitude") released the album Straight Outta Compton. Although they abbreviated it in all official contexts, their self-referential use of the word caused a great deal of controversy in America over the language and lyrics of hip hop. Today, the word is used nearly universally among black rappers in casual contexts.

While nigga raises relatively few objections when used by black rappers, it generally is considered off-limits to nonblack performers. The Beastie Boys, an all-white hip-hop group, were forced off-stage after using the word in a non-hostile context to refer to their audience. In 2001, Latina performer Jennifer Lopez provoked the ire of the African American community when she used the word in a song written by two black songwriters. White rap artist Eminem, on the other hand, who has not hesitated to use apparent slurs aimed at women and homosexuals, does not use nigga in his songs (or any other racial slurs), though The Source magazine unearthed recordings made earlier in his career in which he used the word, out of anger in a freestyle, at his alleged break up with a black girlfriend.

African American comedian Chris Rock's 1996 television special Bring the Pain and 1997 album Roll with the New included a segment known as "Niggas vs Black People", which humorously describes the behavior of some blacks which conforms to the nigger stereotype. Rock cast "niggas" as "low-expectation-havin'" individuals -- proud to be ignorant, violent, and on welfare- the equivalent of "white trash". The controversy of this, to which many took exception because they felt it pandered to anti-black racism, was such that it led Rock to cease performing it.

Conversely, part of the repertoire of white American comedian George Carlin is a routine concerning sensitive words - that words by themselves are never good or bad and it's the user's intention that counts. "We don't mind when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy uses it," he quips. "Why? Because we know they're not racists. They're Niggers!"

Since the coining of the phrase "the N-word" (see below), some television broadcasters have added the word nigger retroactively to their lists of taboo words, thereby censoring movies and television programs from the past in which the word is used, no matter its context or the effect on the program. For example, television broadcasts of the film Die Hard with a Vengeance which originally featured a white character being placed in jeopardy when forced to carry a sign saying "I hate niggers" around Harlem, are altered so that the sign now says "I hate everybody", which is not offensive and, critics argue, renders the scene far less effective. The comedy series All in the Family is rarely censored even though the "N-word" is used frequently—likely because the primary premise of the classic, groundbreaking show is directly related to the main character's social backwardness and racial biases. On the other hand, Mel Brooks's anti-racism comedy Blazing Saddles is rarely shown on American commercial television anymore due to the pervasive use of the word (though, as in All in the Family, the film's intent was to call attention to the issues of racism through satire—a fact discussed at length by Brooks when the film's 30th-anniversary edition DVD was released in 2004).

African-American comedian Dave Chapelle frequently has used the word in satire. In the first season of his show, Chappelle's Show, a blind white supremacist, unaware of the fact that he was black, uses the word repeatedly in remarks disparaging black people and at the end of the sketch comments that he left his wife because she is a "nigger-lover". The second season of the Dave Chapelle show examines this word closely with the sketch, "The Niggar Family" a portrayal of a 1950s white family with a last name resembling the infamous word. The comedy hinges upon the interaction among other members of the community and results in an uncensored and laughable outcome. (source: Multimedia Events-John Cashew")

The controversial animated series The Boondocks (television series) frequently uses the word "Nigga" by the main characters and sometimes others. The term can be used to shock the other characters, or for satirical purposes, as when Granddad tells Huey not to use the word in his house, Huey reminds him that he himself used the word 46 times the day before. Granddad's replay is "Nigga hush!". The show also makes note of "Nigga Moments", where an otherwise well-adjusted black man acts in an ignorant or self-destructive way(in other words, like a Nigga) out of anger. Nigga moments are said to be the #3 cause of death among young black males, right behind pork chops and FEMA.

Names of places and things

Because the word was used freely for many years, there are many official place-names containing the word nigger. Examples include Nigger Bill Canyon, Nigger Hollow, and Niggertown Marsh. In 1967, the United States Board on Geographic Names changed the word nigger to Negro in 143 specific place names, but use of the word has not been completely eliminated.

The British term for a black iron post for mooring ships, made from an old cannon partially buried muzzle upward, with a slightly oversize black cannonball covering the hole, was "niggerhead". Sailors also once called an isolated coral head a niggerhead. The latter are notorious as navigation hazards.

Many varieties of flora and fauna commonly are still referred to by terms which include the word. The nigger-head cactus, which is native to Arizona, is round, the size of a cabbage, and covered with large, crooked thorns. The colloquial name for echinacea, or coneflower, is, variously, "Kansas niggerhead" or "wild niggerhead". The "niggerhead termite" is native to Australia.

In April 2003, there was a stir in Australia over the naming of part of a stadium in Toowoomba, "E.S. Nigger Brown Stand". "Nigger Brown" was the nickname of Toowoomba's first international rugby player. Edward Stanley Brown used the shoe polish brand "Nigger Brown". The stand was named in the 1960s. As in the United States some decades ago, the word was used casually by whites, with little thought. Brown himself was happy with the nickname; in fact it is written on his tombstone. A growing black consciousness among Australia's aboriginal population, however, has meant the term increasingly has become an offensive one, particularly when uttered by whites. Even so, as in the U.S., some younger indigenous Australians have appropriated the term for self-referential use.

Australian civil rights activist Stephen Hagan took the local council responsible to court over the use of the word. Hagan lost the court case at the district and state level, and the High Court ruled that the matter was beyond federal jurisdiction. The federal government cited the High Court ruling on a lack of federal jurisdiction as its legal justification for continued inaction. (Hagan also has tried changing other supposed racial slurs such as the Coon brand of cheese.)

In Sweden, the traditional treat Negerbollar (Negro balls) is now more commonly referred to as Chocolate-, Oat- or Coco balls.

An Irish colloquialism described prunes as "nigger's knackers".

Avoiding offense

"The N-Word"

The euphemism "the N-word" became a part of the American lexicon during the racially polarizing trial of O.J. Simpson, a retired African American football player charged with -- and ultimately acquitted of -- a widely publicized double murder. One of the prosecution's key witnesses was Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who initially denied using racial slurs, but whose prolific and derogatory use of it on a tape recording brought his credibility into question. The recordings were from a session in 1985 that Fuhrman had with Laura McKinney, an aspiring screenwriter working on a screenplay about women in the police force. According to Fuhrman, he was using the word as part of his "bad-cop" persona.

Members of the media reporting on and discussing his testimony began using the term "the N-word" instead of repeating the actual word, presumably as a way to avoid offending audiences and advertisers. The euphemism was adopted quickly by Americans as a way to avoid uttering one of the most generally offensive words in American English. The euphemism is most often used in constructions like: "He called me the N-word", or "I can't believe she said the N-word." (This form mimics other euphemisms for offensive words such as "the F-word" for fuck or "the B-word" for bitch.)

More recently the "N-word" has been joined by a similar euphemism suggestive of the potentially explosive nature of the racial epithet: "drop the N-bomb" as in "You didn't need to drop the N-bomb".

Near-homophones

The word niger is Latin for "black" and occurs in many Latin scientific terms and names. (See Niger for other meanings such as the river in Africa.) Niger is the root for some English words which are near homophones of nigger.

Nigra, which is the way Negro is pronounced by some people in the American South, was considered by some to be a more polite way to refer to a black person. Because of its similarity to the n-word, however, it generally is detested by blacks and is no longer regarded as acceptable.

The words niggardly ("miserly") and snigger ("to laugh derisively") do not refer either to black people or to characteristics or behavior attributed to black people, nor do they have any etymological connection with the word. Niggard (a miserly person) and the verb niggle come from the Old Norse verb nigla -- "to fuss about small things". Many people are ignorant of this or feel the verbal similarity is more important than etymology, however, and so refuse to use these words and take offense to their usage. David Howard, a white city official in Washington, D.C., resigned from his job in January 1999, when he used niggardly in a fiscal sense while talking with African American colleagues, who took offense at his use of the word. Howard later was reinstated, after the furor subsided.

Revisionist usage

In the United Kingdom, the word was in common use throughout the first half of the twentieth century to denote a shade of dark brown. "Nigger" was famously the name of a Black Labrador belonging to the RAF Second World War hero Wing Commander Guy Gibson. The dog died before the 617 Squadron's 1943 raid on the Ruhr dams (the "Dam Busters raid"), and "Nigger" was adopted as the radio code word signaling the destruction of the Möhne dam. Because of the modern connotations of the name, the British television broadcaster ITV now tries to reduce offense by editing out some scenes including the dog when it broadcasts the film Dam Busters. This has been condemned by some as "revisionist", although the edited version apparently produced fewer complaints than a previous uncensored broadcast. However, this scene probably has been viewed more times than any other part of the movie. It was worked into the background of the infamous hotel-room sequence in the Pink Floyd film The Wall, during which the word nigger can be plainly heard coming from the television.

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Story "How the Leopard Got His Spots" tells of how an Ethiopian and a leopard, who are originally sand-colored, decide to paint themselves for camouflage when hunting in dense tropical forest. The story originally included a scene in which the leopard, who now has spots, asks the Ethiopian why he doesn't want spots as well. The Ethiopian's original reply, "Oh, plain black's best for a nigger", has been changed in many modern editions to read, "Oh, plain black's best for me."

"Nigger" versus "nigga": the new revisionism

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Hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur

Since the 1980s, a common argument among some young African Americans and other youth centers around the pronunciation of nigger as "nigga". Nigga, they contend, is simply a synonym for accepted slang words such as dude and guy. Such use of nigga is heavily dependent on context. It could be an insult to say, "Hey, you niggaz"; whereas, "What up, my niggaz?" might be perfectly acceptable. Also, if a non-black refers to a black person as a "nigga", it is sometimes considered insulting. Dave Chappelle used the term profusely on Chappelle's Show. In the first example, the use of "you guys" is similar to "you people", a phrase often seen as off-putting when used by whites to refer to blacks. The second example is in the African-American tradition of using the word to express kinship or affection.

Proponents of this neorevisionist usage of the term believe nigger, in its vernacular pronunciation, is harmless. Moreover, many believe it draws a line between blacks as victims of racism and blacks as empowered, street-wise individuals. In an interview in the documentary Tupac: Resurrection, Tupac Shakur explains, "Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing; Niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs." [sic]

Opponents of this view argue that nigga is simply nigger pronounced with a southern accent, that the revisionist spelling is merely a phonetic representation of the word as it always has been pronounced in African American Vernacular English and nothing more. Nigger, they point out, is also pronounced "nigga" by many who intend it as a racial slur. While proponents of the neorevisionist use of nigga contend they have "reclaimed" the word and robbed it of its racist connotations, critics dispute this. They claim such usage has not changed the word's centuries-old, racist nature. African Americans generally still consider the term offensive and inappropriate in most, if not all, contexts -- and never acceptable in any context when used by nonblacks. Usage by members of other ethnic groups is viewed as racist and/or, as with much of nonblack, hip-hop culture, a form of cultural appropriation. A passage from the African American Registry echoes this sentiment:

[Neorevisionist] arguments [for the use of "nigga"] may not be true to life. Brother (Brotha) and Sister (Sistah or Sista) are terms of endearment. Nigger was and still is a word of disrespect. ...the artificial dichotomy between blacks or African Americans (respectable and middle-class) and niggers (disrespectable and lower class) ought to 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 'til 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.

Sociologists commonly point to black-on-black violence and its association with gangsta rap -- the phenomenon most responsible for the rise in the revisionist use of the term among some black youth -- as a manifestation of the self-destructive, self-loathing mind-set referred to above.

There is also a marked class difference in African-American use of the term. The more highly educated, the higher one's socioeconomic status, regardless of age, the less likely one is to use the term self-referentially, if at all.

Combinations with other words

Within American culture, following the word nigger with a second word connotes an extremely negative conception of that second word, usually playing to racist stereotypes. Thus, to call someone "nigger rich" is to say that they unwisely spend their entire paycheck upon its receipt. To say someone is playing "nigger hockey" implies that they're cheating. To say that something is "nigger-rigged" suggests that it was hastily or carelessly improvised from any available materials. While such phrases are used to describe people of any race, they are nonetheless considered as racist as using the word nigger by itself.

Nigger-lover is a derogatory term used to characterize whites who sympathize with blacks. This term is more commonly used by racist whites against other whites.

The term wigger, or whigger, refers to a young, white mimicker of certain affectations of hip-hop and thug culture. It is a portmanteau of white and nigger. The word is widely considered offensive because of its similarity to nigger and because it reflects stereotypical notions about blacks.

Similarly, other portmanteaus formed from nigger, also generally considered offensive, are used to describe other groups.

These include combining nigger with Chinese, to produce chigger, with Jew , jigger, with Korean, kigger; and with spic (a slur for a Latino), to produce spigger. The terms timber nigger and prairie nigger are used in some areas to refer to Native Americans. This term is found more in the northern part of the United States where the original Native Americans flourished in the large forests that once existed there. Sand nigger refers to those of Arab descent, and snow nigger is a slur against those of Inuit descent.

References

"Nigger Heaven and the Harlem Renaissance." Robert F. Worth, African American Review. Fall 1995. 29(3):461-473
Swan, Robert J. New Amsterdam Gehenna; Segregated Death in New York City, 1630-1801, (forthcoming).

External links