Nigger

Nigger is a pejorative and politically incorrect term used to refer to dark-skinned people, particularly those of African origin. It is ultimately derived from the Latin word niger, meaning "black", in particular from a dialect variant of the Latin-derived word negro, the Spanish for "black". It was commonly used in the United States and United Kingdom in public as recently as the 1960s, when it was commonly replaced in the American South by the variant nigra. Its implications of racism are so strong that it is not heard nearly as often now. Many publications will not even print it, instead using the euphemism N-word or The less-refined word for black people in a Washington Post article on Strom Thurmond's 1948 candidacy for President of the United States.

In the United States, the more neutral descriptive term African-American is currently preferred in public discourse, in the pattern of Native American, Italian-American, Asian-American, and others. Acceptable words vary from country to country and, ultimately, from individual to individual. Mark Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn has been subjected to censorship numerous times because the word is used in the book in an everyday fashion, reflecting its common usage among rural Americans during the time the book was written.

It is worth noting that the word has, to some extent, been reclaimed by black people in recent years, particularly in America. Some young African-Americans, in particular, use the word to one another without any derogatory implication. Other African-Americans, however, consider the term offensive in all contexts and do not agree that it is ever appropriate to use it.

Comedian and activist Dick Gregory used the word as the title of his best-selling autobiography in 1964.

An illustration of the process of reclaiming the word: in 1967 Muhammad Ali had 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," demonstrating that he was offended by the use of the word. Just 21 years later, in 1988, the album Straight Outta Compton was released by the rap group Niggaz With Attitude. Their self-referential use of the word nigger in an affirmative way (albeit sanitized via spelling) shows that to some extent it had been reclaimed. However, the fact that the group's name was often glossed as "NWA" perhaps reflects the extreme discomfort that still surrounded the word.

It may be mentioned that a large majority of Americans consider the word extremely offensive other than in the very specific contexts described above. However, it is not possible to extrapolate from this to usages in other dialects of English, since people speaking those do not face precisely the same pattern of tensions between groups; consequently they have other current terms of abuse, and the term nigger is more likely to come up in the form of its historical usage than it would in the USA.

Indeed, even the sound of the word is offensive to some. Cautious speakers often refuse to use niggardly or snigger, even though these terms do not refer either to black people or to characteristics or behaviour attributed to black people. Nor do they have any etymological connection to the word nigger. A bureaucrat in the city government of Washington, D.C., was briefly driven from his job in the late 1990s when he was overheard referring in a private conversation to "a niggardly budget", meaning that it was insufficient and cheap.

Whilst many people outside the US are aware of the offensiveness of the word in the US, local sensitivities are mostly about different words which describe local minorities pejoratively, for instance in Australia the word boong is a derogatory term for Aborigines which is widely regarded as offensive.

Coon was also once used in the United States, but it, and other offensive slang terms, such as dinge, smoke, spade and darky are almost forgotten.

Nigger was the name of Wing Commander Guy Gibson's black labrador dog. The dog died prior to the 617 Squadron's 1943 Ruhr dams mission (the "Dam Busters" mission), and "Nigger" was subsequently adopted as the radio codeword for the success of the raid.

As a consequence of the modern connotations of the dog's name, UK television broadcaster ITV has taken to editing out significant scenes in its showings of the biopic Dam Busters so as to reduce offence. This has been condemned by some as "revisionist", although the edited version apparently produced less complaints than a previous un-censored broadcast.

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"Nigga or Nigger" Davey D's Hip Hop World long discussion of use of the term in rap and hip-hop.
CNN story on Washington bureaucrat

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