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.[citation needed]

In the black community, nigger is often rendered as nigga, representing the arhotic pronunciation of the
word in African-American English. 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.[46]

Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated,[46] although it has established a
foothold amongst younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both "nigga" and "nigger."
Mixed-race usage of "nigga" is still considered taboo, particularly if the speaker is white. However, trends
indicate that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even amongst white youth, due to the
popularity of rap and hip hop culture.[47]

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;[48]

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 that 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.'"[49]

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.[50]

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.[51][52]
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) a taste 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.
[53]

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 described above. 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.[54] 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.[55]

In American English, "nigger lover" initially applied to abolitionists, then to white people sympathetic
towards black Americans.[56] 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[57]

The prosecutor [Christopher Darden], his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile that 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[58]

The euphemism the N-word became mainstream American English usage during the racially contentious
O. J. Simpson murder case in 1995.

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.

Homophones

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 like 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 Williams offered
to reinstate Howard to his former position. Howard refused reinstatement but took a job elsewhere in
the mayor's government.[59]

Denotational extension

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

The denotations of nigger also comprehend 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, 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.[60]

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, 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."

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.[61]

Other languages

Other languages, particularly Romance languages, have words that sound similar to 'nigger' (are
homophones), but do not mean the same. Just because the words are cognate, i.e. from the same Latin
stem as explained above, does not mean they have the same denotation (dictionary meaning) or
connotation (emotional association). Whether a word is abusive, pejorative, neutral, affectionate, old-
fashioned, etc. depends on its cultural context. How a word is used in English does not determine how a
similar-sounding word is used in another language. Conversely, many languages have ethnic slurs that
disparage "other" people, i.e. words that serve a similar function to "nigger," but these usually stem
from completely different roots.

Some examples of how other languages refer to a black person in a neutral and in a pejorative way
include:

Dutch: Neger ("Negro") used to be neutral, but many now consider it to be avoided in favor of zwarte
("black").[62][63][64][65] Zwartje (little black one) can be amicably or offensively used. Nikker is always
pejorative.[66]

French: Nègre (see the French Wikipedia) is now derogatory. Some white Frenchmen have the inherited
surname "Nègre": see Nègre (homonymie) (a disambiguation page). The word can still be used as a
synonym of "sweetheart" in some traditional Louisiana French creole songs[67]

German: Neger is dated and now considered offensive. Schwarze/-r ("black [person]") or Farbige/-r
("colored [person]") is more neutral but increasingly also dated.

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"[68]

Brazilian Portuguese: Negro and preto are neutral;[69] 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.[70]

In Russian language, негр (negr) is a common neutral word for black people. A word чёрный (chyornyi,
black) can be used as derogatory word for peoples of the Caucasus and, less often, black people.

See also

List of ethnic slurs

List of ethnic group names used as insults

Kaffir (ethnic slur)

Blackfella

Murzyn, Polish word for a black person

N-word (disambiguation)

Cultural appropriation

Guilty or Innocent of Using the N Word, a 2006 documentary

List of topics related to Black and African people

Profanity

Reappropriation

Taboo

"With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", an episode of the animated comedy series South Park, in which Stan's
dad, Randy, becomes a social pariah after using the word (albeit reluctantly) on national television

Golliwog

Footnotes

Pilgrim, David (September 2001). "Nigger and Caricatures". Retrieved June 19, 2007.

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.

Randall Kennedy (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 > 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.

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 December 20, 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]
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Seattle, Wash.: Republican Pub. Co. Retrieved January 23, 2011.

"Lohan calls Obama 'colored', NAACP says no big deal". Mercury News. November 12, 2008.

Hill, Lawrence (May 20, 2008). "Why I'm not allowed my book title". The Guardian. Retrieved October 9,
2019 – via www.theguardian.com.

Twain, Mark (1883). Life on the Mississippi. Academic Medicine : Journal of the Association of American
Medical Colleges. 75. James R. Osgood & 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.

Allan, Keith. The Pragmatics of Connotation. Journal of Pragmatics 39:6 (June 2007) 1047–57

"Using the n-word is more common than you (or President Obama) may think". Washington Post.
Retrieved August 15, 2018.

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.
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Ed Pilkington (March 1, 2007). "New York city council bans use of the N-word". The Guardian Unlimited.
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French, Ron (March 13, 2008). "Attorney General Cox: Kilpatrick should resign". detnews.com. The
Detroit News. Retrieved March 13, 2008.

"Nigger Usage Alert". dictionary.com. Retrieved July 23, 2015.

"100 most frequently challenged books: 1990–1999". ala.org. March 27, 2013.

"Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn". The Complete Works of Mark Twain. Archived from the original on
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"Academic Resources: Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word". Random House. Archived
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Page, Benedicte (January 5, 2011). "New Huckleberry Finn edition censors 'n-word'". the Guardian.

Twain, Mark (January 7, 2011). "'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' – Removing the N Word from
Huck Finn: Top 10 Censored Books". TIME. Retrieved January 23, 2011.

The Christian Science Monitor (January 5, 2011). "The 'n'-word gone from Huck Finn – what would Mark
Twain say?". The Christian Science Monitor.

MacDonald, Michael Patrick. All Souls: A Family Story from Southie Publisher Random House, Inc., 2000.
Page 61. ISBN 978-0-345-44177-5, 9780345441775

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
November 19, 2019.

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 & Gazette. Retrieved November 18, 2019.

Patrice, Joe (October 4, 2019). "The original Emory Law School N-word using professor faces hearing on
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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". 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. 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.

"Nigga Usage Alert". dictionary.com. Retrieved July 23, 2015.

Kevin Aldridge, Richelle Thompson and Earnest Winston. "The evolving N-word." The Cincinnati
Enquirer, August 5, 2001.

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 (November 9, 2014). "Redefining the Word". Washington Post. Retrieved May 24, 2019.

"Profanity in lyrics: most used swear words and their usage by popular genres". Musixmatch. December
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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, second edition, (1996) p. 981

vol 2 p6

"The Color of Words", by Philip Herbst, 1997, ISBN 978-1-877864-97-1, p. 166

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.

Yolanda Woodlee (February 4, 1999). "D.C. Mayor Acted 'Hastily,' Will Rehire Aide". 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. ASIN 1601630468.
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

"Le Son des Français d'Amérique – Les Créoles". Retrieved October 9, 2019 – via www.youtube.com.

Accademia della Crusca, Nero, negro e di colore, 12 ottobre 2012 [IT]

"Tabela 1.2 – População residente, por cor ou raça, segundo a situação do domicílio 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 > Edição Rio de Janeiro – NOTÍCIAS – Sou incapaz de qualquer atitude racista, diz procurador".
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References

"nigger". The Oxford English Dictionary (2 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.
vte

x-word

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Ethnic slurs

Categories: Words coined in the 1770sAfrican-American societyAfrican-American-related

controversiesAmerican English wordsAnti-African and anti-black slursEnglish profanityPejorative terms
for peopleEnglish wordsNegro

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