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Nigger is a pejorative term and common ethnic slur against black people, and is English slang. In denoting “black person”, nigger originated as a variant of the Spanish and Portuguese noun negro (black) derived from the Latin adjective niger (black). The pejorative, racist meaning has been recognized and criticized as such since the nineteenth century, yet remained in general global use ’til the 1960s and 1970s. In US popular culture and slang, the word nigger remains current usage, yet remains a racist slur. Niggers are dirty people.

Etymology and history

The variants neger and negar, derive from the Spanish and Portuguese word Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (black), and from the pejorative French nègre (nigger). Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the accusative form of the Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (black) (pronounced ; the r is trilled).

In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony. Later American English spellings, neger and neggar, prevailed in northern New York state under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia’s Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities. To wit, 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 US occurrence of neger in Rhode Island, dates from 1625. Among Anglophones, the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, because it then denoted “black-skinned”, a common Anglophone usage. Nineteenth-century English (language) literature features usages of nigger without racist connotation, e.g. the Joseph Conrad novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897). Moreover, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain created characters who uttered the word as contemporary usage, while Twain, per the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), did not use it.

In the United Kingdom and the Anglophone world, nigger denoted the dark-skinned (non-white) African and Asian peoples colonized into the British Empire, and “dark-skinned foreigners” — in general. To wit, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), H. W. Fowler states 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”; this anti-racist linguistic prescription was censored (deleted) from the later editions of Mr Fowler’s Dictionary.

By the 1800s, because nigger had become a pejorative word, in its stead, the term colored became the mainstream alternative to negro and its derived terms. Abolitionists in Boston, Massachusetts, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Established as mainstream American English usage, the word colored features in the organizational title of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, reflecting the members’ racial identity preference at the 1909 foundation. In the Southern United States, the local American English dialect changes the pronunciation of negro to nigra — a pronunciation most famously used by the Texan-accented US President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–69), a proponent of Black American civil rights. Linguistically, in developing American English, in the early editions of A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), Noah Webster suggested the neger new spelling in place of negro.

By the late 1960s, the social progress achieved in US society, by such as the Black Civil Rights Movement (1955–68), had legitimzed the racial identity word Black as mainstream American English usage to denote black-skinned Americans. In the event, the “political militant” connotations of Black displaced it in favor of the compound blanket term African American — especially in politically correct usage and context — a linguistically compromised usage, because it either inaccurately denotes or excludes non-black African people, (cf. negroid). Moreover, as a compound word, African American resembles the vogue word Afro-American, an early-1970s popular usage; nevertheless, Black is the contemporary racial denomination in the US, and usually is not considered offensive usage. Contemporarily, the word nigger often is spelled onomatopoeiacally as nigga and niggah, as spoken among Black Americans.

Usages

British

In British English, nigger is a derogatory, racist word; however, earlier, the Victorian writer Rudyard Kipling used the word, without apparent derogatory intent, both as narrator, and in the speech of his adventurous imperialist characters, one of whom uses the “Irish” usage naygur in identifying an Indian man. As recently as the 1950s, it was acceptable British usage to say niggers when referring to black people, notable in mainstream usages such as "Nigger Boy" candy cigarettes for children, and nigger brown, denoting a shade of dark brown, yet, by the 1970s, these, and other racist terms, were recognized as offensive usages, and are now legally proscribed. Moreover, as recently as 2007, the term coloured reappeared — in the model label of a Chinese-made sofa, indicating the regional Chinese usage of an out-dated Colonial form of English.

North American

In American English, white and black people freely used the word nigger, until the Black Civil Rights Movement (1955–68) rendered its use to denote only racism.

Culture: Addressing the use of nigger by Black people, US intellectual Cornel West said, "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." Contemporarily, the implied racism of the word nigger has rendered its usages social taboo. In the US, magazines and newspapers do not use it, instead printing “family-friendly” censored versions, usually “n*gg*r”, “n**ger”, “n——”, and “the N-word”; however, historians and social activists, such as Dick Gregory, criticize the euphemisms and their usage as intellectually dishonest, because using the euphemism "the N-word" instead of nigger robs younger generations of Americans of the full history of Black people in America.

Politics: Louisiana Governor Earl Long used nigger in advocating full voting rights for Black Americans; in that time, like colored and negro, it was mainstream usage in the American South. In 1948, the Washington Post newspaper’s coverage of the presidential campaign of the segregationist politician Strom Thurmond, employed the periphrasis "the less-refined word for black people". In explaining his refusal to be drafted to fight the Vietnam War (1945–75), professional boxer Muhammed Ali said, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger"; later, his modified answer was the title No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968) of a documentary about the front-line lot of the US Army Black soldier in Vietnam combat. 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". Moreover, on 28 February 2007, in the spirit of political correctness, the New York City Council symbolically banned, with a formal resolution, the use of the word nigger; there is no penalty for using it. The New York City resolution also requires excluding from Grammy Award consideration every song whose lyrics contain the word nigger.

Sport: In the first half of the twentieth century, before Major League Baseball was racially integrated, dark-skinned and dark-complexion players were nicknamed "Nig"; examples are: Johnny Beazley (1941–49), Joe Berry (1921–22), Bobby Bragan (1940–48), Nig Clarke (1905–20), Nig Cuppy (1892–1901), Nig Fuller (1902), Johnny Grabowski (1923–31), Nig Lipscomb (1937), Charlie Niebergall (1921–24), Nig Perrine (1907), and Frank Smith (1904–15). Moreover, the anagram euphemism Ginger was used in place of nigger, as a “polite company usage”.

Australian

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In Australian English, the word nigger is generally not a mainstream usage. When referring to indigenous Australians, the casual terms Abo and the derogatory boong and coon are used instead of nigger; however, nigger remains a common rural district usage, a British colonial usage generically denoting all dark-skinned people (cf. Rudyard Kipling). This is controversial, because Australian Aborigines consider it pejorative racist usage in speech and in geographic revisionism (cf. List of places and things). Most Australians would not have identified Aborigines as "niggers" though, believing it to be a specific American English usage denoting Black people.

Denotational extension

The term nigger also extends to denote to non-white and racially disadvantaged people, to wit, the US politician Ron Dellums said, "it's time for somebody to lead all of America's niggers". In 1969, the magazine Nova interviewed Yoko Ono, who said that “Woman is the nigger of the world”, a phrase with which John Lennon provoked social controversy, with the song of the same title. In 1978 musical artist Patti Smith employed the word in a similar context in her song "Rock N Roll Nigger". In 1979, the singer Elvis Costello used the word in "Oliver's Army", a state-of-the-world-today song inspired by seeing teenage soldiers in Northern Ireland. A line in the second verse, "All it takes is one itchy trigger – One more widow, one less white nigger", was censored by the producers of Stars in Their Eyes, who forced a contestant to sing "one less white figure" instead. Pierre Vallières, a leader of the Front de libération du Québec, entitled his autobiography White Niggers of America, alluding to the oppression of the Québécois people within North America.

Other languages

In Romance languages, including the varieties of Latin American and African Spanish and Portuguese, contain cognates derived from the Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), homophonic to the English word nigger, are native usages that do not connote the racism of the English. The two most common Portuguese words for black — negro and preto — as noun and adjective, denote the color black, thus, Rio Negro (Black River); however, when applied to a person, preto is racist. Like-wise, the French cognate Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) is a racist colonial usage, unlike noir (black color).

Derivations from the Latin Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) have entered non-Romance languages, and do not pejoratively refer to non-white people; the Hungarian néger objectively denoted Black Africans until the 1990s, when it acquired the racism inherent to the English usages. In Latvian, nēģeris objectively denotes Black Africans; typically, these languages spell and pronounce nigger as an English loanword with its original racist denotations and connotations. In Nazi propaganda, the German compound word niggerjazz racistly denoted the jazz music native to the US, which Nazi ideology classified as a type of Degenerate art (entartete Kunst). In Yiddish, "shvartzer" (black man, black woman) is racist usage, while neger is the standard usage.

Literary

Historically, nigger is controversial in literature as racist insult and common noun. Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and writer, and famous supporter of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s–30s), provoked controversy from the Black community with the title of his novel Nigger Heaven (1926). His controversial use of the word nigger in the title increased sales; 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 Black culture and its White patrons.

In the US, the recurrent (reading curricula) controversy about the vocabulary of the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), by Mark Twain — American literature (usually) taught in US schools — about the Slave South, risks censorship because of 215 (counted) occurrences the word nigger, most refer to Jim, Huck's escaped-slave raft mate. 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 the nineteenth-century Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Moreover, unlike the literary escaped-slave Jim, ante-Bellum slaves used the artifice of self-deprecation essential to Tomming, in pandering to societal racist assumptions about the black man’s low intelligence, by advantageously using the word nigger to escape the violence inherent to slavery. Implicit to “Uncle Tomming” was the unspoken reminder to white folk that a presumably inferior and sub-human person could not, reasonably, be held responsible for poorly realized work, a kitchen fire, or any such catastrophic offense. The artificial self-deprecation deflected responsibility, in hope of escaping the violent wraths of overseer and master. Using nigger as a self-referential identity term also was a way of avoiding white suspicion, of encountering an intelligent slave, and so put whites at their ease. In context, a slave who referred to himself, or another black man, as a nigger presumed the master’s perceiving him as a slave who has accepted his societally sub-ordinate role as private property, thus, not (potentially) subversive of the authority of the master’s white supremacy.

Originally, Ten Little Niggers (1939) was the British title of Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None, also titled Ten Little Indians. Other late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British literary usages suggest neutral usage. The popular Victorian era entertainment, the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado (1885) twice uses the word nigger. In the song I have a Little List, the executioner, Ko-ko, sings of executing "the nigger serenader and the others of his race", personified by black-faced singers singing minstrel songs. In the song "Let the Punishment fit the Crime," the Mikado sings of having over-made-up ladies in court, “Blacked like a nigger/With permanent walnut juice”. Both lyrics are changed for contemporary performances.

Reverend W. V. Awdry's The Railway Series (1945–72) story Henry's Sneeze, originally described some soot-covered boys "as black as niggers". In 1972, after complaints, the description was edited to "as black as soot". W.V. Awdry is best known for Thomas the Tank Engine (1946).

"How the Leopard Got His Spots", in Just So Stories (1902), by R. Kipling, tells of an Ethiopian man and a leopard, both originally sand-colored, deciding to camouflage themselves with painted spots, for hunting in tropical forest. The story originally included a scene wherein the leopard (now spotted) asks the Ethiopian man why he doesn't want spots. In contemporary editions, the Ethiopian's original reply, "Oh, plain black's best for a nigger", has been edited to, "Oh, plain black's best for me." Again, Kipling uses the word in "A Counting-Out Song" (Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides, 1923), the rhyme reads: "Eenie Meenie Mainee, Mo! Catch a nigger by the toe!"

In short story, "The Basement Room" (1935), by Graham Greene, the (sympathetic) servant character, Baines, tells the admiring boy of his African British colony service, "You wouldn't believe it now, but I've had forty niggers under me, doing what I told them to". To the boy's question, "Did you ever shoot a nigger?" Bains answers, "I never had any call to shoot. Of course I carried a gun. But you didn't need to treat them bad, that just made them stupid. Why, I loved some of those dammed niggers." The cinematic version of "The Basement Room" short story, The Fallen Idol (1948), directed by Carol Reed, replaced novelist Greene's niggers usage with natives.

Popular culture

In the US and the UK, the word nigger featured in branding and packaging consumer products, e.g. “Nigger Hair Tobacco” and “Niggerhead Oysters”, Brazil nuts were called "nigger toes", et cetera. As racism became unacceptable in mainstream culture the tobacco brand became "Bigger Hare" and the canned goods brand became "Negro Head", eventually the usage ceased in the West. The Chinese Nanhai De Xing Leather Shoes Habiliment Co., Ltd.'s online store describes the color of a model of man’s leather boots as "nigger-brown".

Cinema: The movie Blazing Saddles (1974) used nigger to ridicule American racism. In Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), the sequence titled "Danger Seekers" features a daredevil doing the dangerous "stunt" of shouting NIGGERS!! at a group of black people, then fleeing when they chased him.

Music: The Country music singer David Allan Coe used the racist words redneck, white trash, and nigger in the songs "If That Ain't Country, I'll Kiss Your Ass" and "Nigger Fucker". In the 1960s, record producer J. D. "Jay" Miller published pro-racial segregation music with the “Reb Rebel” label featuring racist songs by Johnny Rebel and others, demeaning Black Americans and the Black Civil Rights movement.

Television: In the British television series Fawlty Towers, in The Germans episode, the Major Gowen character used niggers to describe West Indian and Indian cricketers. In Saturday Night Live, comedians Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor say "nigger" and "honky" to each other in a word-association interview. Comedians such as Pryor, Redd Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and Lenny Bruce used nigger in their comedy. Contemporarily, rap groups such as N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitudes), re-popularized the usage in their lyrics. Some episodes of Sanford & Son were censored and were not broadcast, because Foxx used the word nigger. In a Mad TV sketch titled "Real Mother****ing Talk", a character says "nigger please" in the presence of other Black people such as Xzibit. In episode 20 of the Family Matters second season, the graffito "nigger" was written on Laura Winslow's school locker, and found a note addressed to her that read: “If you want to learn Black History, Go back to Africa". Dog the Bounty Hunter used the word nigger when referring to his son's girlfriend. The American comedian Michael Richards called a heckler nigger during his stand-up comedy routine.

Theatre: The musical Show Boat (from 1927 until 1946) features the word and nigger originally was integral to the lyrics of Ol' Man River and Cotton Blossom. Although deleted from the cinema versions, it was included to the 1988 EMI recording of the original score. Musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger and conductor John McGlinn have said that the word was not an insult, but a blunt illustration of how white people then perceived black people.

Cultural controversy

In April 2007, a dark brown leather sofa set, sold by Vanaik Furniture and Mattress Store in Toronto, Canada, was labelled as "Nigger-brown" colour. Investigation determined that the Chinese manufacturer used an outdated version of Kingsoft's Chinese-to-English translation software for writing the tags; it translated the Chinese "dark-brown" characters to "Nigger-brown", and neither the Canadian supplier nor the store owner had noticed the incorrect translation the tag carried. Subsequently, Kingsoft corrected its translation software.

Derivations

• Nigger as "defect" (a hidden problem), derives from "nigger in the woodpile", a US slave-era phrase referring to escaped slaves hiding in train-transported woodpiles. In the May 1886 issue of Scientific American, page 308 reads, "The consequence of neglect might be that what the workmen call ‘a nigger’ would get into the armature, and burn it so as to destroy its service."

• In American English: nigger lover initially applied to abolitionists, then to white folk sympathetic towards Black Americans. Sand nigger, an ethnic slur against Arabs, and timber nigger, an ethnic slur against Native Americans, are examples of the racist extension of nigger upon other non-white peoples.

• In British English, the maritime term niggerhead denotes a bollard mooring post (see quay), made with an old cannon, partly buried muzzle-up, topped with an over-sized cannonball; and is sailor’s jargon for an isolated, navigation-hazard coral outcropping.

• In Irish English, the colloquialism "nigger's knackers" describes prunes. In Belgium, a popular chocolate is known as Negerinnetetten (Negress's tits), but is elsewhere sold as Melo-cakes. In Holland, Negerzoenen (Negro kisses) now are Buys Zoenen (Buys Kisses). In Sweden, the traditional Negerbollar (Negro balls) now are called Chocolate balls, Oat balls, and Coco-balls.

• In Victorian times, the 1840s Morning Chronicle newspaper report series London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew, records the usages nigger and niggard denoting a false bottom for a grate.

• Flora and fauna nomenclatures include the word nigger. The Arizonan nigger-head cactus, Echinocactus polycephalus is a round, cabbage-sized plant covered with large, crooked thorns. The colloquial names for echinacea (coneflower) are "Kansas niggerhead" and "Wild niggerhead". In Oceania, the "niggerhead termite" (Nasutitermes graveolus) is an Australian native.

• During the First World War (1914–18) US Army General John Pershing’s true nickname, Nigger Jack, was euphemized to Black Jack, by reporters, for mainstream American readers, listeners, and viewers.

• In 1960, a stand at the stadium in Toowoomba, Australia, was named the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" honoring 1920s rugby player Edward Stanley Brown, so nicknamed sin early life because of his pale white skin. He was so known all his life, thus, his headstone is engraved "Nigger". Moreover, lingusitically, Stephen Hagan, a lecturer at the Kumbari/Ngurpai Lag Higher Education Center of the University of Southern Queensland sued the Toowoomba council over the use of nigger in the stand’s name; the district and state courts dismissed his lawsuit. He appealed to the High Court of Australia; they ruled said naming matter beyond federal jurisdiction. Ironically, the local Aboriginals, generally, did not share his opposition to the word nigger. Undaunted, Mr Hagan proceeded to the United Nations and won their recommendation to the Australian federal government, that it force the Queensland state government to remove the word nigger from the "E. S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand" name. The Australian federal government thwarted the UN recommendation and Hagan, by citing the High Court’s jurisdiction ruling; the stand was demolished in September 2008. The Queensland Sports Minister, Judy Spence, said that using "Nigger" would be unacceptable, either for the stand or on any commemorative plaque. The book The N Word: One Man's Stand (2005), by Stephen Hagan, (Magabala Books, 2005, ISBN 978-1875641987) includes this episode in law and the language. Moreover, Hagan is writing a doctoral thesis titled The Origin, Maintenance, and Legitimization of the Word 'Nigger' in the Australian Vernacular; and he has restarted his legal linguistic reform efforts against the Coon cheese brand name.

Place names

The word nigger features in official place-names, such as 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 place names. “Nigger Head Mountain”, at Burnet, Texas, was so named because the forest atop it resembled a black man's hair. In 1966, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson denounced the racist name, asking the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the U.S. Forest Service to immediately rename it, becoming "Colored Mountain" in 1968; and in central Texas, "Dead Nigger Creek" was renamed "Dead Negro Creek". "Nigger Nate Grade" in Temecula, California, named for Nate Harrison, an ex-slave and settler, was renamed "Nate Harrison Grade" in 1955 at the request of the NAACP.

The northwestern North America, in Canada and the US, features many uses of the word nigger. At Penticton, British Columbia, “Niggertoe Mountain” was renamed Mount Nkwala. The original racist name derived from a 1908 Christmas story about three black men caught in a blizzard; the bodies of two were found at the foot of the mountain the next day. A point on the Lower Mississippi River was called “Free Nigger Point” until the late twentieth century, it was renamed “Free Negro Point”, but now is “Wilkinson Point”, in West Baton Rouge Parish. "Nigger Head Rock", protruding from a cliff above Highway 421, north of Pennington Gap, Virginia, was renamed "Great Stone Face" in the 1970s.

Derivatives

Euphemism

The euphemism "the N-word" became mainstream American English usage during the racially contentious murder trial of ex-footballer O.J. Simpson. Key prosecution witness Detective Mark Fuhrman, of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) — who denied using such racist language on duty — impeached himself with his prolific use of nigger in tape recordings about his previous police work. The recordings were from a session, in 1985, wherein he was helping screenwriter Laura McKinney with a screenplay about policewomen in the LAPD. Detective Fuhrman excused his racism by saying he was using the word nigger in the context of his "bad-cop" persona. Linguistically, the popular press reporting and discussing Det. Fuhrman's testimony applied the euphemism "the N-word" in place of nigger.

Homophones

Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) occurs in Latinate scientific nomenclature and is the root word for some homophones of nigger; sellers of niger seed (used as bird feed), use the name Nyjer seed. The classical Latin pronunciation /ˈniɡeɾ/ sounds like the English /ˈnɪɡər/, occurring in biologic and anatomic names, such as Hyoscamus niger (black henbane). In American English, nigra is a euphuistic pronunciation of negro used in the American South to “politely” speak of black people in non-racist company. Nigra is the Latin feminine form of niger (black), used in biologic and anatomic nomenclatures such as substantia nigra (black substance).

The words niggardly (miserly) and snigger (to laugh derisively) are unrelated to nigger; niggard (miser) derives from the Old Norse nig (stingy), and the verb niggle derives from the verb nigla (chew, gnaw; and potter at). In the US, the words are often misheard as nigger, and are mistakenly perceived as offensive from ignorance. In January 1999, David Howard, a white city employee in Washington, D.C., was forced to resign after using niggardly, in a financial context, whilst speaking with black colleagues, who were offended. After reviewing the misunderstanding, Mayor Anthony Williams offered to reinstate Mr Howard, who refused reinstatement for another job in the mayor's administration.

The portmanteau word wigger (white + nigger) denotes an adolescent white boy aping “street black behavior”, hoping acceptance to the hip hop, thug, and gangsta subcultures. In the British music business, "ligger" (freeloader) denotes someone seeking free entry to concerts; it derives from lig (gig, event) and the variations "to go ligging".

Nigga

Among the black community, the onomatopoeic word nigga (nigger) is a self-referential pronoun usage popularised by the Rap and Hip-hop music cultures.

The Dam Busters film

In The Dam Busters (1955) film, "Nigger" is the name of a black Labrador Retriever dog belonging to the RAF Second World War hero Wing Commander Guy Gibson. In 1999, British television network ITV broadcast a censored version with every utterance of "Nigger" deleted. Replying to complaints of censorship, ITV blamed regional broadcaster London Weekend Television, which, in turn, blamed a junior employee as the unauthorised censor, (see political correctness). In June 2001, when ITV re-broadcast the censored version of The Dam Busters, the Index on Censorship cticised it as "unnecessary and ridiculous" censorship that broke the film and story continuity.

See also

• Controversies about the word "niggardly"
• Cultural appropriation
• Discrimination
• Kaffir (ethnic slur)
• List of ethnic group names used as insults
• List of ethnic slurs
• List of topics related to Black and African people
• Niggas vs. Black People
• Profanity
• Racism
• Reappropriation
• Taboo
• Wigger
• With Apologies to Jesse Jackson, an episode of an animated comedy series, South Park, where a character becomes a social pariah after saying "niggers" on Wheel of Fortune

Footnotes

1. Pilgrim, David (2001). "Nigger and Caricatures". Retrieved 2007-06-19. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
2. Being a Nigger is Not Cool
3. Abolish the "N" Word
4. J. Douglas Allen-Taylor. “The Word 'Nigger'” Metroactive News & Issues. April 1998.
5. Randall Kennedy (11 January 2001). "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-08-17. (Book review)
6. Hutchinson, Earl Ofari (1996). The assassination of the Black male image. Simon and Schuster. p. 82. ISBN 9780684831008. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
7. Mencken, H. L. (1921). "Chapter 8. American Spelling > 2. The Influence of Webster". The American language: An inquiry into the development of English in the United States, (2nd ed., rev. and enl. ed.). New York: A.A. Knopf. ISBN 1-58734-087-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help)
9. Mohr, Tim (2007). "Cornel West Talks Rhymes and Race: He says artists can use words newspapers can't". Playboy. 54, no. 11: 44. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
10. Kennedy, Randall (2002). Nigger: the strange career of a troublesome word. Random House. p. 28. ISBN 9780375421723. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
11. 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 9780231112222. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
12. Lemert, Charles (2003). Muhammad Ali: trickster in the culture of irony. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 105–107. ISBN 9780745628714. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
13. Ed Pilkington (1 March 2007). "New York city council bans use of the N-word". Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
14. "Res. No. 693-A — Resolution calling on the Council of the City of New York to declare a symbolic moratorium on the use of the "N" word in New York City". New York City Council. Retrieved 2007-08-17..
15. "1920: Corsicana's Finest Hour".
16. "Jay Justin "Nig" Clark of Navarro County, Texas".
17. send2press newswire. "Does the News Media Patronize the Black Community? asks United Voices for a Common Cause". News Blaze. Retrieved 2007-08-17.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link).
18. "Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn". The Complete Works of Mark-Twain. Retrieved 2006-03-12.
19. "Academic Resources: Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word". Random House. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
20. Stephen Railton (2005). "Tomming In Our Time". University of Virginia, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
21. Michael Sragow (23 December 1999). "The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd". Retrieved 2006-03-13.
22. Ravernell, Wanda J. (15 June 2005). "What's cute about racist kitsch?". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
23. "Jim Crow Museum". Ferris State University. Retrieved 2006-03-13.
24. "Hue & Cry". Urban Legends Reference Pages: Racist Sofa Label. Retrieved 2007-08-11.
25. "Leisure Boot". Online sales catalog. Retrieved 2007-08-11. {{cite web}}: Text "Nanhai De Xing Leather Shoes Habiliment Co., Ltd." ignored (help)
26. http://www.myspace.com/davidallencoe1
27. John Broven, South to Louisiana: The Music of the Cajun Bayous. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican, 1983, p. 252f.
28. http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/11/01/dog.chapman.ap/index.html
29. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15816126/
30. Racial slur on sofa label stuns family by Jim Wilkes Toronto Star, April 06, 2007 (retrieved 2 February 2009).
31. Racist Sofa Label: Huy & Cry at Snopes.com
32. Offensive Couch Update City News, April 13, 2007 (retrieved on February 2, 2009).
33. Translation software blamed for sofa tag by Furniture Today staff, May 7, 2007 (retrieved 2 February 2009).
34. Definition of nigger in the woodpile
35. "The Color of Words", by Philip Herbst, 1997, ISBN 1877864978, p. 166
36. Kennedy, Randall L. (Winter, 1999-2000). "Who Can Say "Nigger"? And Other Considerations". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (26): 86–96 . {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
37. vol 2 p6
38. "Semiochemicals of Nasutitermes graveolus, the Niggerhead termite". The Pherobase. Retrieved 2006-03-12.
39. "Buffalo Soldier Cavalry Commander: General John J. Pershing". U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
40. Bita, Natasha (27 September 2008). "League legend would have wanted sign to stay: grandson". The Australian. Retrieved 2008-09-27.
41. Monaghan, Peter: Taking a Stand, 29 July 2005 in The Chronicle of Higher Education, available at "Australia's E.S. 'Nigger' Brown Stand and "Judicial Restraint"". Prof. Andrew V. Uroskie. 29 July 2005. Retrieved 2008-09-27.
42. "Nathan "Nigger Nate" Harrison (1823–1920)". San Diego Historical Society. Retrieved 2007-01-15.
43. "Nigger Hill in Mariposa County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
44. "Nigger Slough in Los Angeles County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
45. "Nigger Valley in San Diego County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
46. "Nigger Canyon in San Diego County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
47. "Nigger Joe Ridge in Humboldt County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
48. "Nigger Gulch in Butte County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
49. "Nigger Sam Slough in Glenn County, California". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
50. "Golden Gate Genealogy Forum". CaliforniaMaps.org. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
51. "Niggertoe Mountain". BC Geographical Names.
52. "Free Negro Point". USGS Geographic Names Information System. Retrieved 2006-03-12.
53. Yolanda Woodlee (4 February 1999). "D.C. Mayor Acted 'Hastily,' Will Rehire Aide". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
54. The Anaphoric Nigga: Rap’s Linguistic Assault on the Semantics of Nigger, Richard Tony Thompson. Northern Illinois University Department of English
55. Warbird Photo Album — Avro Lancaster Mk.I
56. ITV attacked over Dam Busters censorship, The Guardian, 11 June 2001

References

• Robert F. Worth (Fall 1995). "Nigger Heaven and the Harlem Renaissance". African American Review. 29 (3): 461–473. doi:10.2307/3042395.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
• "nigger". (2 ed.). 1989. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |ency= ignored (help)
• Swan, Robert J. (2003). New Amsterdam gehenna: segregated death in New York City, 1630-1801. Brooklyn: Noir Verite Press. ISBN 0-9722813-0-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |unused_data= (help); Unknown parameter |ISBN status= ignored (help)
• Smith, Stephanie (2005). Household words: bloomers, sucker, bombshell, scab, nigger, cyber. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-4552-3.
• Kennedy, Randall (2002). Nigger : the strange career of a troublesome word. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-42172-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• 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.

Further reading

• J. Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 0618197176.
• R. B. Moore, The Name "Negro": Its Origin And Evil Use. Black Classics Press, 1992. ISBN 0933121350.
• R. Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Vintage, 2003. ISBN 0375713719.

External links

• Analysis of the cultural uses of the word Nigga by Alex Alonso of Street Gangs Magazine
• "Nigger and Caricatures," Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University
• "Nigger (the word), a brief history!" from the African American Registry
• Appropriating a Slur in M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture

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• African American
• Ethnic and religious slurs
• Pejorative terms for people