I think some people are saying some silly things in this thread, particularly on the question of whether “nigger” has connotations other than just “being black”.
Thought experiment:
There’s a restaurant in small mostly-white town in Alabama. A bunch of customers are hanging out there eating their Alabaman food, chatting with the waitstaff, as they do most days.
Then in walks a black couple. They are wearing nice, tidy, clothing. Their hair is neatly trimmed. One of them is wearing glasses. They sit at a table, politely chat with the waitstaff, using “proper” English, eat their food, leave a nice tip, don’t make a mess, and depart.
The next morning, another black couple walks in. They are covered in tatoos and have “grills” and cornrows or dreds. They are wearing gangsta rap shirts and very low-slung jeans and Air Jordans. They are loud and disruptive, using lots of slang and vernacular, and then get in a big and very vocal argument with the waitress accusing her of trying to rip them off, and then storm off in a cloud of profanity, having underpaid their bill.
Are those two couples equally likely to be described as “niggers” after they depart?
Because while the probably is not zero for the first couple, I’m quite sure that it’s vastly higher for the second couple. And in fact, if I had constructed this thought experiment slightly different, describing the first couple, and then asking for characteristics the second couple could have that would increase the probability that they would be called “nigger”, it’s not like people would just be like “umm, blacker skin?”.
My point being, it’s possible that both:
(a) “nigger” is a word that has historically been used to describe and dehumanize people purely based on their skin color
AND
(b) “nigger” is associated with a set of stereotypical traits stereotypically associated with blackness. (I started out saying “negative traits”, but while some of them are clearly negative, some are value-neutral.)
And it follows from (b) that, given that there are millions of black people in America, some of them, purely by chance, presumably fit the traits mentioned in (b).
Now, I think it is was odd (and, given the reaction she received, clearly a bad idea) for Annie to publicly describe, on the SDMB, her private thoughts on two particular individuals. But I think it’s a bit silly for people to act as if what she was saying was literally without meaning.
I’m half Jewish, and many of my friends and half my family is Jewish. If I met a Jew who happened, purely by chance, to be an incredibly cheap asshole, constantly trying to rip people off and going way out of his way to save every last penny, and if that individual also had a huge nose, and was named “Shlomo”, I might think to myself “wow, it’s incredible how much Shlomo fits all the worst Jewish stereotypes”. And I can imagine a SDMB thread entitled something like “guilty thoughts you’ve had” in which I might conceivably post that anecdote. Although there is no anti-Jewish slur word that has either the historical weight or the negative implications of “nigger”.