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White nigger, sometimes shortened to wigger , is an ethnic slur referring to a White American whose behaviors and mannerisms are similar to Black Americans. The term nigger is a racial slur that refers to a Black American.
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White nigger, sometimes shortened to wigger , is an ethnic slur referring to a White American whose behaviors and mannerisms are similar to Black Americans. The term nigger is a racial slur that refers to a Black American.
Dating from the nineteenth-century United States, "white nigger" was a derogatory and offensive term for a "black person who defers to white people or accepts a role prescribed by them," or "a white person who does menial work." [1] It was later used as a slur against white activists involved in the civil rights movement such as Viola Liuzzo, [2] James Groppi, [3] Bill Baxley, [4] and Jonathan Daniels. [5]
The term "white niggers" was uttered twice by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia in an interview on national television in 2001. [6] Byrd was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. [7]
During all the 19th century until the early part of the 20th, Italian immigrants in the United States were often referred to as "white niggers". [8]
The term was applied to Irish immigrants and their descendants. Irish were also nicknamed "Negroes turned inside-out" (while African Americans would be referred to as "smoked Irish"). [9]
Texas blacks referred to Polish immigrants as dem white niggahs or dem white niggas whom they hold in undisguised contempt but were apparently stunned by their high literacy rates. [10] Polish farmers commonly worked directly with southern blacks in east Texas, and they were commonly in direct competition for agricultural jobs. Blacks frequently picked up a few words of Polish, and Poles picked up some of the black English dialect in these areas during the late 19th century. R. L. Daniels in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine wrote a piece on "Polanders" in Texas in 1888, praising their industriousness and hard work ethic. He cited instances where Polish farmers called their landlords massa , [11] denoting a subordinate position on level with slavery, and, when asking a woman why she left Poland, she replied "Mudder haf much childs and 'Nough not to eat all". [12] Daniels found that Poles were efficient farmers and planted corn and cotton so close to their homes as not to leave even elbow room to the nearby buildings. [13]
In another use of the term, Pierre Vallières's work White Niggers of America refers to French Canadians. Vallières used the phrase to highlight a feeling among French-speaking Québécois people of being treated as second-class citizens under an English-speaking ruling class in Quebec. [14]
"White Nigger" was a nickname given to the nineteenth-century English explorer Richard Burton by colleagues in the East India Company Army, who ostracized him because he immersed himself so completely into Indian culture, including language, dress, and relationships with locals. [15] [16]
"White nigger" was sometimes used to refer to Irish Catholics, in the context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [17] An example of this term is found in the lyrics of the Elvis Costello song Oliver's Army (1979): "Only takes one itchy trigger. / One more widow, one less white nigger." [18] In 1969, the longest-serving editor of The Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, was allegedly called a "white nigger" by company chairman Thomas Bleakley McDowell, because of his support for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement. [19] [20]
In May 2016, Irish politician Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin, attracted controversy after tweeting: "Watching Django Unchained — A Ballymurphy Nigger!" After criticism for the use of a racial slur, Adams deleted the tweet and, from a Belfast press conference, he issued a statement saying, "I have acknowledged that the use of the N-word was inappropriate. That is why I deleted the tweet. I apologise for any offence caused." Adams added, "I stand over the context and main point of my tweet, which were the parallels between people in struggle. Like African Americans, Irish nationalists were denied basic rights. I have long been inspired by Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, who stood up for themselves and for justice." [21]
Haiti's first Head of state Jean-Jacques Dessalines called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded a great honour as it meant brotherhood between Poles and Haitians after Polish Legionnaires joined the black Haitian slaves during the Haitian Revolution, contributing to the establishment of the world's first free black republic and the first independent Caribbean state. [22] Dessalines also gave the Poles a special status as Noir (legally considered to be black) and full citizenship under the Haitian constitution. [23]
About 160 years later, in the mid-20th century, François Duvalier, the president of Haiti who was known for his black nationalist and Pan-African views, used the same concept of "European white Negroes" while referring to Polish people and glorifying their patriotism. [24]
The recorded history of Haiti began in 1492, when the European captain and explorer Christopher Columbus landed on a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean. The western portion of the island of Hispaniola, where Haiti is situated, was inhabited by the Taíno and Arawakan people, who called their island Ayiti. The island was promptly claimed for the Spanish Crown, where it was named La Isla Española, later Latinized to Hispaniola. By the early 17th century, the French had built a settlement on the west of Hispaniola and called it Saint-Domingue. Prior to the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the economy of Saint-Domingue gradually expanded, with sugar and, later, coffee becoming important export crops. After the war which had disrupted maritime commerce, the colony underwent rapid expansion. In 1767, it exported indigo, cotton and 72 million pounds of raw sugar. By the end of the century, the colony encompassed a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.
Nigger is a racial slur in American English used against Black Americans. Starting in the 1990s, references to nigger have been increasingly replaced by the euphemism "the N-word", notably in cases where nigger is mentioned but not directly used. In an instance of linguistic reappropriation, the term nigger is also used casually and fraternally among African Americans, most commonly in the form of nigga, whose spelling originated from the phonological system of African-American English.
Saint-Domingue was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1659 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city on the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer specifically to the Spanish-held Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. The borders between the two were fluid and changed over time until they were finally solidified in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
Colored is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow Era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur, though it has taken on a special meaning in Southern Africa referring to a person of mixed or Cape Coloured heritage.
The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish, British, and Polish participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most prominent general. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery and ruled by non-whites and former captives. The successful revolution was a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World and the revolution's effects on the institution of slavery were felt throughout the Americas. The end of French rule and the abolition of slavery in the former colony was followed by a successful defense of the freedoms the former slaves had won, and with the collaboration of already free people of color, of their independence from white Europeans.
Honky is a derogatory term used to refer to white people, predominantly heard in the United States.
Kaffir, also spelled Cafri, is an exonym and an ethnic slur – the use of it in reference to black people being particularly common in South Africa. In Arabic, the word kāfir ("unbeliever") was originally applied to non Muslims before becoming predominantly focused on pagan zanj who were increasingly used as slaves. During the Age of Exploration in early modern Europe, variants of the Latin term cafer were adopted in reference to non-Muslim Bantu peoples even when they were monotheistic. It was eventually used, particularly in Afrikaans, for any black person during the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid eras, closely associated with South African racism, it became a pejorative by the mid-20th century and is now considered extremely offensive hate speech. Punishing continuing use of the term was one of the concerns of the Promotion of Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act enacted by the South African parliament in the year 2000 and it is now euphemistically addressed as the K-word in South African English.
John Elliott Rankin was a Democratic politician from Mississippi who served sixteen terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1921 to 1953. He was co-author of the bill for the Tennessee Valley Authority and from 1933 to 1936 he supported the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which brought investment and jobs to the South.
Afro-Dominicans are Dominicans of predominant or full Black African ancestry. They are a minority in the country representing 7.8% of the Dominican Republic's population according to a census bureau survey in 2022. About 4.0% of the people surveyed claim an Afro-Caribbean immigrant background, while only 0.2% acknowledged Haitian descent. Currently there are many black illegal immigrants from Haiti, who are not included within the Afro-Dominican demographics as they are not legal citizens of the nation.
A house slave was a slave who worked, and often lived, in the house of the slave-owner, performing domestic labor. House slaves performed essentially the same duties as all domestic workers throughout history, such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals, and caring for children; however, their slave status could expose them to more significant abuses, including physical punishments and use as a sexual slave.
In the English language, the word negro is a term historically used to denote people considered to be of Black African heritage. The word negro means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive, or completely neutral, largely depending on the region or country where it is used, as well as the context in which it is applied. It has various equivalents in other languages of Europe.
The 1804 Haiti massacre, sometimes referred to as the Haitian Genocide, was carried out by Afro-Haitian soldiers, mostly former slaves, under orders from Jean-Jacques Dessalines against much of the remaining European population in Haiti, which mainly included French people. The Haitian Revolution defeated the French army in November 1803 and the Haitian Declaration of Independence happened on 1 January 1804. From February 1804 until 22 April 1804, squads of soldiers moved from house to house throughout Haiti, torturing and killing entire families. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed.
The history of Poles in the United States dates to the American Colonial era. Poles have lived in present-day United States territories for over 400 years—since 1608. There are 10 million Americans of Polish descent in the U.S. today. Polish Americans have always been the largest group of Slavic origin in the United States.
Polish Haitians are Haitian people of Polish ancestry dating to the early 19th century; a few may be Poles of more recent native birth who have gained Haitian citizenship. Cazale, a small village in the hills about 30 kilometres (19 mi) away from Port-au-Prince, is considered the main center of population of the ethnic Polish community in Haiti, but there are other villages as well. Cazale has descendants of surviving members of Napoleon's Polish Legionnaires which were forced into combat by Napoleon but later joined the Haitian slaves during the Haitian Revolution. Some 400 to 500 of these Poles are believed to have settled in Haiti after the war. They were given special status as Noir and full citizenship under the Haitian constitution by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of an independent Haiti.
French Haitians, also called Franco-Haitians are citizens of Haiti of full or partial French ancestry. The term is sometimes also applied to Haitians who migrated to France in the 20th and 21st century and who have acquired French citizenship, as well to their descendants.
Paki is a derogatory ethnic slur originating from the United Kingdom, directed towards people of South Asian descent.
In the contemporary English language, the noun Polack is a derogatory, mainly North American, reference to a person of Polish origin. It is an anglicisation of the Polish masculine noun Polak, which denotes a person of Polish ethnicity and typically male gender. However, the English loanword is considered an ethnic slur.
"Go back to where you came from" is a racist or xenophobic epithet which is used in many countries, and it is mainly used to target immigrants and/or ethnic groups whose members are falsely considered to be immigrants.
William Edgar Easton was an American playwright, journalist, and political activist. He wrote two plays about the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath: Dessalines (1893), a historical drama about Jean-Jacques Dessalines; and Christophe (1911), a drama about Henri Christophe, King of Haiti following the Revolution.