Nigger (racial slur)

In the English language, nigger is a racial slur directed at black people. In the United States, the term was historically applied to enslaved African Americans and has recently been partially reappropriated by some of their descendants as nigga

Quotes

Early use

• She is a foole, that dare not wash her face, because she would not have her husband thinke she paints it so she is a nigger, that dare not laugh, least her husbande shoulde thinke shee is lascivious.
  • Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia (London: P. Short, for Cuthbert Burbie, 1598), p. 131; adapting Plutarch, Moralia, Conjugalia Praecepta, 29

18th- and 19th-century United States

• Nigger in the woodpile.
  • Anonymous (1840–1850)

• I jumped aboard de telegraph,
    And trabbled down de riber,
  De lectric fluid magnified,
    And killed five hundred nigger.
  • Stephen Foster, "Oh! Susanna" (1848); often bowdlerised as 'chigger'

• Eena, meena, mina, mo,
  Catch a nigger by his toe;
  If he squeals let him go,
  Eena, meena, mina, mo.
  • American variant of "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" (c. 1850s), reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951)

• Our nig, our nig!
  • Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859), Ch. III

• Saucy, impudent nigger, you!
  • Harriet E. Wilson, Our Nig (1859), Ch. VI

• Ten little nigger boys went out to dine;
  One choked his little self, and then there were nine...
  One little nigger boy living all alone;
  He got married, and then there were none.
  • Frank J. Green, "Ten Little Niggers" (1869), adapting "Ten Little Indians" (1868)

• It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither.
  • Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Ch. XV, spoken by Huck

• Give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an ell.
  • Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Ch. XVI, an "old saying" quoted by Huck

20th-century United States

• Things at the White House
    Looking mighty curious,
  Niggers running everywhere,
    White people furious.
  • Anonymous, "Niggers in the White House" (1901), sts. 1–10
  • See Booker T. Washington and Teddy Roosevelt

• AFRICAN, n. A nigger that votes our way.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

• “Othello with his occupation gone,” she teased.
  “Othello was a nigger,” I said.
  • Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929), Ch. XXXV

• Then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were nigger eggs... thought they were nigger eggs.
  • Kinky Friedman, from a 1980 tape, as reported on the Burnt Orange Report, an Austin-based Democratic blog, in September 2006; quoted in Texas Weekly, vol. 23, no. 13 (18 September 2006), Online

• You fuckin' guys are acting like a bunch of fuckin' niggers! You work with niggers, huh? Just like you two, always sayin' they're gonna kill each other.
  • Reservoir Dogs (1990), spoken by Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi)

• When you came pullin' in here, did you notice a sign on the front of of my house that said "Dead Nigger Storage"?
  • Pulp Fiction (1994), spoken by Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino)

• There's black people, and there's niggers. And niggers have got to go. Every time black people wanna have a good time, ign'ant-ass niggers fuck it up.
  • Chris Rock, Chris Rock: Bring the Pain‎ (1996)

21st-century United States

• Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.
  • Kitty Kelley, quoting an unnamed town resident, Oprah: A Biography (New York, NY: Crown, 2010), p. 193

Outside the United States

• He never lost his appetite —
  He bigger grew and bigger;
  And proved, with every inch of height,
  A nigger is a nigger.
  • Henry Kendall, “My Piccaninny”, in The Australian Town and Country Journal (19 June 1880), p. 28, col. 4

• The lady who dyes a chemical yellow,
  Or stains her grey hair puce,
  Or pinches her figger,
  Is blacked like a nigger
  With permanent walnut juice.
  • W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado (1885), act II

• The nigger was calm, cool, towering, superb.
  • Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), Ch. 1
  • The titular character, James Wait, is a West Indian black sailor aboard the merchant ship Narcissus sailing from Bombay to London.

• Oh, plain black's best for a nigger.
  • Rudyard Kipling, "How the Leopard Got His Spots", in Just So Stories (1902)
  • The Ethiopian tells the Leopard why he does not want spots.

• The sun has got his hat on and he's coming out today.
  He's been tanning niggers out in Timbuktu;
  Now he's coming back to do the same to you.
  • Noel Gay and Ralph Butler, "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" (1932)

• You wouldn't believe it now, but I've had forty niggers under me, doing what I told them to.
  • Graham Greene, "The Basement Room" (1935)

• Down amongst the bushes she worked like a nigger.
  • Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

• You are not even a nigger, you are an African.
  • Hotel Rwanda (2004), spoken by Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte)

Quotes about nigger

• I noticed that among this class of colored men the word "nigger" was freely used in about the same sense as the word "fellow," and sometimes as a term of almost endearment; but I soon learned that its use was positively and absolutely prohibited to white men.
  • James Weldon Johnson (anonymously), The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), Ch. VI; see nigga

• If the slur is mentioned in key court decisions, it should not be taboo in law schools.
  • Randall Kennedy and Eugene Volokh, "The case for quoting the n-word in university classrooms", The Washington Post (13 May 2021), Online

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Nigger on Wikipedia