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The word nigger is a highly controversial term used in many countries, specifically those in the British and American political axis, to refer to individuals with dark skin, especially those of African origin who are racially Negro or Australian Aborigine. It was once used freely in standard English.
The word today carries a strong connotation of social inferiority and/or unpleasant exoticism, making it so highly pejorative that most white people in Anglo contexts no longer use it, especially in public. See the Wiktionary entry Nigger for more relating to this.
The origin of the word, 'nigger,' is in the Latin 'niger,' meaning 'black.' The word, as 'niger,' entered into Spanish and Portuguese. Early Modern French obtained it from Portuguese where it became 'negre' and 'negro,' respectively. English acquired the word from French, which was manifested in earlier English variants, such as 'negar,' 'neegar,' 'neger,' and 'niggor.'
The word is thought to have come into its current form via the Southern pronunciation of 'negro,' which yielded phonetic mistranscriptions as 'nigra.' For much of its history, until the early 20th Century in America, it was simply descriptive ('nigger' meaning 'black American' in an informal, esp. Southern sense [bi-racially]), and occasioned little controversy among speakers of any ethnicity, save occasional annoyance. It later became symbolic of racial prejudice and racist laws (and lynchings) against Blacks in the American South, and began to symbolize a mindset by which, through easy use of such terms as 'nigger,' White interests mobilized against African-Americans.
Nigger is almost always pejorative or suspect when used by non-blacks in America, or those without dark skin. It is considered vulgar as well. Several American English dictionaries have labeled it as a vulgarism, including a 1913 Webster's dictionary, which defined nigger as "A negro; — in vulgar derision or depreciation". In its pejorative sense, it packs more firepower than other North American ethnic epithets such as spic (for a Latino/Latina), wop (for one of Italian origin), polack (for one of Polish origin), and kike (for a Jew), as offensive as some of these terms can be. The only American English terms that come relatively close to nigger in terms of their pejorative punch are far more rudely specific terms such as 'greaser' for Latino/Hispanics, or 'Christ-killer' for Jews.
'Nigger' is now perhaps the rudest term in the English language, for White and non-Hispanic speakers. However, some African Americans regularly use it as a term of endearment, as in "What's up, my nigger (or nigga)?" Nigger is widely understood by African Americans to also mean a fellow traveler, but also an ignorant (socially, or practically unknowledgeable) person, regardless of race. Nigga as a term of endearment is often evident among younger white Americans, who often copy black locutions, and also among other non-white minorities, for whom 'nigger' is a term of solidarity (with a glamorous Black entertainment culture). It is worth noting that while the word has been partly reclaimed by some young African Americans, older black Americans tend to consider the term offensive in all contexts, and do not agree that it is ever appropriate to use (or hear) it. A generation gap exists. Among Whites, speakers exist who use it casually to refer to African-Americans of slave lineage, but most are rural, Southern, and/or born before the 1950s. It is an archaism.
Nigga, as opposed to nigger, tends to be more gender-specific amongst African American youth, where nigga is used when referring to a male. Females are rarely, if ever, referred to as "nigga". The term is increasingly used within the "" community, sometimes with one young white person describing another by the term. Some have attempted to explain this usage as a different, and non-offensive word, "nigga".
Problems with this use of the word are illustrated in the comedy-drama film 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 others around who he does not know so well, causing a dramatic reaction.
In the United States, nigger was freely, if sometimes fraughtly, used by both whites and blacks in the American South and adjacent areas, until the civil rights era of the 1960s, when it became unacceptable in public (but not necessarily private) discourse. A striking usage is in a televised report from the Birmingham police actions, where Dr. Martin Luther King's protesters were countered with dogs and fire hoses. A White female citizen from another Alabama county was interviewed. Apparently stricken, she said, "It's not right. We don't treat niggers like that here." In such locutions, the term, 'nigger,' is less noteworthy than the political shift. 'Nigger' was, for generations of whites, the childhood term for African-Americans in the South. Among white Southerners of the generation comprising the 1960s, learning not to use the term was an act of deliberate contrition, or at least etiquette.
Today, unless it is used very cautiously, its implications of racism are so strong that use of it is a social taboo in English-speaking countries. Many American magazines and newspapers will not even print nigger 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 nigger with the periphrasis "the less-refined word for black people".
In Australia, the word is now rarely used in polite speech by urban Whites, in any context. It has, however, seen common use in rural or semi-frontier districts, although the usage was British-Colonial, e.g., applying generically to dark-skinned people of any origin (c.v. Rudyard Kipling). This has led to controversy since Abos have started to take the term strongly to heart, in both the pejorative and inclusive senses. See below under Place names.
Nigger has a long history of causing controversy in literature. Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer famous as a promoter of the Harlem Renaissance, caused a great controversy by titling his novel Nigger Heaven, in 1926. The controversy centered on the use of the word nigger in the title and fueled the sales of the hit novel. Of the controversy, Langston Hughes wrote:
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 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), a classic frequently taught in American schools, revolves largely around the novel's 215 uses of the word, nigger, referring to Jim, Huck's raft-mate.
One interesting example of its 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 for tiger See Eenie Meenie.
Agatha Cristie's novel, 'Ten Little Indians,' originally appeared as 'Ten Little Niggers.'
Among the classic novels of Joseph Conrad is The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897).
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", implying that white Americans had, and that he was offended by the racist use of the word, as well as the racial oppression associated with it. In 1972, John Lennon released a song, "Woman is the Nigger of the World", implying that as black people were discriminated against in some countries so were women globally. Pierre Vallières 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 The White Niggers of North America.
Comedian 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.
In 1988, the album Straight Outta Compton was released by the hip hop group N.W.A. ("Niggaz With Attitude"). Although they abbreviated it in all official contexts, their positive self-referential use of the word caused a great deal of controversy in America over the language and lyrics of hip hop. Many rappers now use the word with a positive meaning.
Comedian Chris Rock's 1996 television special Bring the Pain and 1997 album 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.
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 had a particularly fair complexion and hence was given the nickname "Nigger", in a similar way that a tall person might be called "Shorty". He also used the shoe polish brand "Nigger Brown". The stand was named in the 1960s. As noted above, the word has very little offensive character in Australia. Brown himself was happy with the nickname; in fact it is written on his tombstone. Most local Aboriginal members condone its use in this context. This didn't stop civil rights activist Stephen Hagan taking the local council responsible to court over the issue. Hagan lost the court case at the district and state level, and the High Court ruled that the matter was not of federal jurisdiction. The Federal Government cited the High Court ruling on a lack of federal jurisdiction as its legal justification for continued inaction. (Hagan has also tried changing other "racial names" such as the Coon brand of cheese.)
The euphemistic term "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 the word "nigger" on a tape recording brought his credibility into question.
Members of the media reporting on and discussing his testimony started 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 quickly adopted by Americans as a generally non-offensive way to refer, for whatever reasons, to 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, the less common "the S-word" for shit, and other on-the-fly formations for other words generally regarded as offensive.)
Since the expression "the N-word" distracts attention momentarily from the subject at hand in order to identify the speaker as a person of high fastidiousness, the expression is a "genteelism." A small minority of modern English speakers find all such self-serving genteelisms inherently vulgar and feel that, if the word "nigger" must be discussed, then "nigger" has to be used.
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 nigger. Many people are ignorant of this, however, and so refuse to use these words and take offense to their usage. David Howard, a white city official in Washington, D.C., was briefly driven from his job in January 1999 when he used niggardly in a fiscal sense while talking with African-American colleagues, who protested his use of the word.
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 offence by cutting 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 has probably 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 movie 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 white, decide to paint themselves for camouflage. 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."
The term wigger or whigger is used to describe a Caucasian who emulates urban-African American culture. The word "wigger" is usually offensive. It is a portmanteau word combining white and nigger.
Similarly, a chigger is used to describe a person of East Asian descent who emulates urban-African American culture. It is usually considered to be offensive. It is a portmanteau word combining Chinese and nigger. The term kigger, a combination of Korean and nigger, has also been used.
Nigra was once considered a more polite form of nigger.
Coon was also once used in the United States as a word for black people, but it and other slang terms formerly seen as playful and even affectionate (circa 19th.C- 1940s), such as dinge, smoke, spook, spade, and darky, are no longer remotely acceptable or in general use.
In some white ethnic subcultures, other terms are used, the origins of which are not directly based on the word nigger. For example, Italian-Americans often use the word moolie, which is a shortened form of mulignane, a dialectical variant of melanzano, the Italian word for eggplant (because the eggplant has a dark "skin" surrounding it).
In London Cockney rhyming slang certain words, used in context, can be racially insulting (e.g.: egg and spoon ), but as these rhymes do not tend to be in use for long, documenting them tends to be an historical exercise. A more recent racist term for an African, or African-seeming individual, is 'sooty.'
Jews sometimes use the Yiddish word schvartze when referring to black people, although whether the intent is derogatory or not has been a subject of lively and contentious debate (comedian Jackie Mason once referred to then-New York City mayor David Dinkins as "a fancy schvartze with a moustache," creating much controversy at the time; however, many Jews have insisted that the word schvartze simply means "black" in any context and is not intended as a racial slur). Consider that the German word for "black" is schwarz, or indeed Schwarze/Schwarzer for "a black person" (roughly pronounced the same as the Yiddish word), and that Yiddish is very closely related to German. The current usage of the word amongst English and Yiddish-speakers is, however, more likely a matter of individual intent and context. Related to the Yiddish and German words is a Jewish surname, Schwartz. It is, however, an immigrant term equivalent to the Italian term, 'mulignane.' Its popularity in public discourse depends on generational respect for a specific immigrant tradition.
Other alternatives that have been used are jiggerboo, pickaninny, spook, sambo, ted, wog or simply black bastard. Each of these words is generally considered to be utterly unacceptable today.
The current polite, common term for black people in America is 'black'. Some write it with a capital-B (e.g. "Black"), although this is sometimes interpreted as a sign of pretension. (By contrast, references to "the White race" with a capital-W rarely appear outside of white supremacist literature.) Politically correct usage even decries "black" in favor of "African American", which is sometimes also derided as pretentious and inaccurate.
"Nigger Heaven and the Harlem Renaissance." Robert F. Worth, African American Review. Fall 1995. 29(3):461-473.
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