# Anyone familiar with this racist term? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 10, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936 "2017-07-10T17:27:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/61 "2017-07-11T14:24:10Z")
Yes, if the word applies. And I’m sure most of us have horrible thoughts about some people we know. All I’m saying is if the word fits… ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/62 "2017-07-11T14:35:09Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Again, I think you are mistaken. I fear the phrase was - and to an extent - remains common use by racists of all classes. That’s fine - but that isn’t what you said in the comment I was replying to. My speculation was that, since it originated from the US and predates TV and radio, that the original adoption in the UK would have come from those who may have read American books - perhaps explaining my impression that it’s more a phrase I’d expect to hear from a Bertie Wooster than a UK coal miner. But it was rare and anachronistic even when I was a kid, so I accept that my feeling on this distribution of usage may not be accurate. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/63 "2017-07-11T14:35:52Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > [Nubian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubians) Spoiled for NSFW language… [Whoosh!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHLJfxfXHBg)… ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/64 "2017-07-11T14:45:13Z")
When I was a kid, in the late 70s in the upper northwest of Washington, one of my friends found out she had native American ancestry. She was talking about it and my grandma overheard her. Grandma then said, “There must have been an Indian in the woodpile”. It confused me then, and I hadn’t heard the phrase again until I read this thread. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/65 "2017-07-11T14:45:24Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I know two people who act like stereotypes of that word, and I would call them that if I used that words. No apology offered. > > I call them the dog and the bitch (another word I rarely use). Wow. I think I’m about to fall off my chair again. The problem you might be missing with that is that the “stereotype” is having dark skin and ancestors from Africa. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/66 "2017-07-11T14:51:30Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Yes, if the word applies. And I’m sure most of us have horrible thoughts about some people we know. All I’m saying is if the word fits… You’re invited to a party! [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20336863#post20336863](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20336863#post20336863) ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/67 "2017-07-11T15:00:18Z")
> [@TCMF-2L](#): > > …In the UK I personally have never heard it used to suggest any kind of mixed heritage. > > However the contained racist slur means it is automatically offensively archaic today. It is a hopelessly outdated expression from a previous era when Agatha Christie, for example, could call a story ‘ **Ten Little Niggers** ’ or a WW2 Dambusters pilot could call his black dog ‘ **Nigger**.’ The UK’s economic exploitation of slavery was largely an arm’s-length affair. Perhaps this accounts for sustained cluelessness in that period (compared to the US) about the significance of this kind of vocabulary, even among decent people? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/68 "2017-07-11T15:09:35Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > What’s a Nubian? I saw what you did there, FWIW. And Dr Seuss has his share of politically incorrect elements (of the sort which were innocuous for their time but cringeworthy now); I remember reading “And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street” to my daughter and having to gloss over the bit about the people with “eyes all a-slant”. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/69 "2017-07-11T15:42:29Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I saw what you did there, FWIW. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/70 "2017-07-11T16:29:42Z")
I had heard it and interpreted it as to mean someone’s ancestry included people they might not want to claim. And I pretty much think that’s how it was used when I heard it. However, a google search brought this up: [![](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1860s_political_cartoons_of_the_United_States#/media/File:The_Nigger_in_the_Woodpile.jpg) ](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1860s_political_cartoons_of_the_United_States#/media/File:The_Nigger_in_the_Woodpile.jpg) This looks like it might even be the origin of the phrase ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/71 "2017-07-11T17:12:26Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I am familiar with the phrase\* (I grew up in London in the 70s). I would only have associated it with clueless old people or perhaps equally clueless members of the upper classes. It is astonishing that such cluelessness is alive and well in 2017. And perhaps no coincidence that the phrase was uttered within the confines of the equally anachronistic East India Club. > > \*ETA: not in the “black ancestry” sense, but in the “concealed serious problem” sense. > [@Riemann](#): > > I have a sense in the UK that this phrase may have maintained currency in the upper classes far later than we’d like to think… > [@Riemann](#): > > I don’t know if US usage parallels the UK, but it strikes me as a somewhat “literary” expression, or one associated with the dialect of the upper classes - something that I would have expected to hear from Bertie Wooster, not a coal miner. Not that the working classes were any less racist, just that doesn’t sound to me like working class vernacular. I’m British, and middle-class – heard the expression first, and most frequently, from an uncle of mine (1918 – 2010). My uncle was voluminously well-read, and from a well-read and interested-in-everything family – he might, himself, have originally come upon the expression in one of various ways (in his speech, it always referred to something out-of-kilter and not-feeling-right – nothing associated in any way, with people’s ancestry). My uncle explained the saying to me, as a kid, in terms of the pre-US-Civil War Underground Railroad – suggestions of a supporter of slavery, having a fugitive slave briefly concealed in his woodpile. Uncle was progressive in his views, and totally un-racist in living his life: he took all people, as he found them as individuals. He just loved words, and had very little use for what he regarded as not-appropriate politically-correct squeamishness and “preciousness” over what he saw as only words. In later decades, he made the concession of moderating the “woodpile” saying, along W.C. Fields lines – referring to “a coloured gentleman in the fuel supply”. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/72 "2017-07-11T17:36:07Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I’m British, and middle-class – heard the expression first, and most frequently, from an uncle of mine (1918 – 2010). My uncle was voluminously well-read, and from a well-read and interested-in-everything family… This jibes with a subsequent comment that I made. Although the expression may not be associated with any particular social stratum in the US, since it originated in the US before the era of TV or even radio, it was likely first introduced into UK dialects by more literate people who encountered the expression when reading American authors. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/73 "2017-07-11T18:20:26Z")
As mentioned in the Wikipedia entry, the term was used in early editions of two Agatha Christie books. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/74 "2017-07-11T21:40:46Z")
It was very common in certain branches of the family (related by marriage) when I was younger. Someone born in the late 1800s to very early 1900s would have no qualms about using it. To say it for someone not extremely old today indicates a person completely out of touch with reasonable social mores. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/75 "2017-07-11T23:23:19Z")
For me, it’s only been slightly more in currency than “spade”, i.e. almost entirely used as an example of racist language than actually used as such. I can’t say I’ve ever actually encountered either but I’m not 100% certain. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/76 "2017-07-12T02:34:29Z")
I heard the expression /once/ in Aus, in the mid 70’s, from an upper/middle lower/upper class young man. It had no racist context or content (sometimes a word is just a collections of sound and meaning). He was reffering to the fact that he was the unacknowledged boyfriend of a girl. It was not a sexual relationship, and actually, the reason he was unacknowledged was because he had been friend-zoned, though he didn’t know it. . ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/77 "2017-07-12T02:35:46Z")
> [@Floppy\_Joe](#): > > As W.C. Fields once said, “There’s a Ubangi in the fuel supply.” > [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#): > > The W.C. Fields quote references a “Nubian,” I believe. I remember him saying “Ethiopian.” > [@Icarus](#): > > I have only ever hear it in reference to literal suspect ancestry. Same here. 67, grew up in San Diego. Heard it used to suggest suspect ancestry due to adultery, and not necessarily with any particular race. > [@samclem](#): > > Fields used it in two different movies. He used _Ubangi_ in the first, and _Ethiopian_ in the second. Never used _Nubian_. Thank you! ---
**Author:** ![Whatever4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@Whatever4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whatever4)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/78 "2017-07-12T05:33:46Z")
Haven’t heard it in many years. I always took it to mean to change the topic of conversation because someone who shouldn’t have been listening, was. From my grandparent’s generation, late 1800s to 1960s. They were white immigrants who lived in a rural area settled primarily by white immigrants, so I don’t know how they came by the expression. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/79 "2017-07-12T06:24:45Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I’m coming up with nothing on Google. Such laws existed in the South to ensure that a child fathered on a slave could not inherit. Sure, but “slave” is not a race, and doesn’t require the definition of race. You were talking about laws that define race. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936/80 "2017-07-12T11:38:37Z")
> [@si\_blakely](#): > > [Nubian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubians) I think **Mr Dibble** was making reference to Kevin Smith’s movie _Chasing Amy_. 😉 And regarding the OP, yes, I’ve heard the phrase before, generally from older people and meaning something hidden or secret in someone’s background or situation, with a connotation of said thing being undesirable or underhanded. Even I think it’s a staggeringly racist term, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-familiar-with-this-racist-term/790936.md?page=5)