In the English language, nigger is a racial slur directed at black people. 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 reflects the phonology of African-American English.
Miscegenation is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere and genus. The word first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, an anti-abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 presidential election in the United States. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. These laws were overruled federally in 1967, and by the year 2000, all states had removed them from their laws, with Alabama being the last to do so on November 7, 2000. In the 21st century, newer scientific data shows that human populations are actually genetically quite similar. Studies show that races are more of an arbitrary social construct, and do not actually have a major genetic delineation.
Mark Fuhrman is a former detective of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). He is primarily known for his part in the investigation of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Beginning in 2013, the decision was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions ruling that restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States were unconstitutional, including in the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).
The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
Clifford Joseph Trahan, better known by the stage names Johnny Rebel and Pee Wee Trahan, was an American singer, songwriter, and musician who performed songs that were supportive of white supremacy. He used the Johnny Rebel name for a series of recordings for J. D. "Jay" Miller's Reb Rebel label in the 1960s in response to the civil rights movement. The 12 songs exhibit racial hatred marketed as "subtle, rib-tickling satire". The songs frequently used the racial slur "nigger" and often voiced sympathy for racial segregation, the KKK, and the Confederacy.
Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. CRT also considers racism to be systemic in various laws and rules, not based only on individuals' prejudices. The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical theory rather than criticizing or blaming individuals.
Peggy Ann Pascoe was an American historian. She was the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. She was a member of the University of Oregon History Department from 1996 until her death on July 23, 2010. Prior to her work at UO, Pascoe worked as an assistant professor and then associate professor at the University of Utah, where she taught courses on women’s history, race, and sexuality. Pascoe’s work centers on the history of race, gender, and sexuality, with a particular investment in law and the U.S. West. Together with George Lipsitz, Earl Lewis, George Sanchez, and Dana Takagi, Pascoe edited the influential American Crossroads book series in Ethnic Studies, published by the University of California Press. Pascoe held this position for fifteen years.
Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.
Perez v. Sharp, also known as Perez v. Lippold or Perez v. Moroney, is a 1948 case decided by the Supreme Court of California in which the court held by a 4–3 majority that the state's ban on interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Charles James Ogletree Jr. was an American legal scholar who served as the Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, where he was the founder of the school's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He was also the author of books on legal topics.
The New Century Foundation is a white nationalist organization founded in 1994 by Jared Taylor known primarily for publishing a magazine, American Renaissance, which promotes white supremacy. From 1994 to 1999, its activities received considerable funding by the Pioneer Fund. The organization also has a DBA name of American Renaissance.
France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Twine has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published 11 books and more than 100 articles, review essays, and books on these topics.
Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court affirmed that Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute was constitutional. This ruling was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1964 in McLaughlin v. Florida and in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. Pace v. Alabama is one of the oldest court cases in America pertaining to interracial sex.
The Southern Regional Council (SRC) is a reform-oriented organization created in 1944 to avoid racial violence and promote racial equality in the Southern United States. Voter registration and political-awareness campaigns are used toward this end. The SRC evolved in 1944 from the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
In the United States, many U.S. states historically had anti-miscegenation laws which prohibited interracial marriage and, in some states, interracial sexual relations. Some of these laws predated the establishment of the United States, and some dated to the later 17th or early 18th century, a century or more after the complete racialization of slavery. Nine states never enacted anti-miscegenation laws, and 25 states had repealed their laws by 1967. In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such laws are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Eric Yamamoto, the Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, is an internationally recognized expert on issues of racial justice, including racial reconciliation and redress. Flowing from the landmark 1944 Korematsu v. United States case, he is known for his work as a member of Fred Korematsu's 1983 legal team that succeeded in having Korematsu's original conviction overturned.
I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 German-American documentary film and social critique film essay directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson, the film explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin's recollections of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his personal observations of American history. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards and won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.
Justin Hansford is a Professor of Law at Howard University School of Law and the founder and executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. He was nominated by the United States to serve as a founding member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD). Hansford was previously a democracy project fellow at Harvard University, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an associate professor of law at the Saint Louis University School of Law.
This article treats the usage of the word nigger in reference to African Americans and others of African or mixed African and other ethnic origin in the art of Western culture and the English language.
