What’s the context behind that title? Who are the “Nègres blancs”?
White Niggers.
That would be Wigger to you, my friend. 
Huckleberry Finn was last in the top 10 most challenged in 2007,* To Kill a Mockingbird*, 2011. Gone With the Wind isn’t mentioned, but I suspect that it is because it is very rarely used in the first place.
That’s nothing new, is it? Haven’t parents been whining about inappropriate books in classrooms since basically ever?
I can agree on general principle that our culture is more sensitive than it used to be to potentially offensive content, but this seems a poor example. When I was in fourth grade I did a biography on the wonderful children’s author Judy Blume, and holy crap did people want to ban her books! She wrote about religion and periods and being fat and sexual abuse and girls having sex! People banned the crap out of her books. In the 80s. It’s such a common facet of literature that people want to remove offensive content that we’ve even had other books written about banning books, and those books about banning books have been banned. It’s not a new phenomenon.
I read some stories aloud to my daughter that included the n-word (I’m white, she’s Asian). The March series by John Lewis was one of these. She was extremely young, and we were not in the USA at the time, so I took time to explain something about the history and context of the word before we began. I also emphasized that it is a word that (remember, talking to a very young child here) she should NEVER say, and that I was only saying it aloud in this case because of its importance to the story.
The same argument could be made for Huck Finn, I think. But this is all predicated on me reading aloud to my daughter. Were I teaching a class to middle or high school kids in the USA, I would not say the word aloud. They’ve all heard it, and me saying it can only cause pain. Reading a book out loud in class is a horrible waste of class time in any case - I can’t imagine doing it for more than short exerpts. And when I did, I’d probably pause and say nothing in place of the word.
The Harry Potter books were banned from my daughters elementary school (this the bible belt…folks) but in intermediate school (4th and 5th) they read them class…I think they just plain gave up…because of the movies popularity…my kid loved them…still does as a matter of fact!
Not entirely relevant, but just FYI: arguably the most common word in colloquial Mandarin sounds a lot like the N-word*, and so I say and hear it very often.
It was very weird at first; people would approach my desk and say (那个 is N-word-sounding word): “那个 那个 那个 Mijin, can I ask you something?”
And I hope it doesn’t cause too many misunderstandings when people overhear Chinese tourists…
- The pronunciation varies, and dictionaries say it *should *rhyme with “dagger”, but I’ve only ever heard foreigners say it that way.
Locals usually say it as rhyming with “digger”, or sometimes as rhyming with Vega
Quebecois.
I’d broaden that to include all the descendants of French Canadians, even that lady I met in Florida with the last name Roy who was horrified when I asked if she was French.
Stephen Pinker has a pretty interesting chapter in The Stuff of Thought about the uses of taboo language, whether profanity, obscenity, or epithet. One of the takeaways is that a lot of people respond at a base neurological level to taboo language: they cause a brief spike in stress reaction, even when people use the words themselves.
The word in question is, in American English, the single most taboo word, and I suspect that in most Americans it creates a stronger stress spike than any other word. I prefer not to use it even in the reference sense unless absolutely necessary.
“Niggardly” is an interesting edge word. Awhile ago I did a very basic search for the word online. Virtually every use I could find was either a smirking racist thinking themselves brilliant for poking at black people in an “I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU” way, or else was an article by someone sadly shaking their head at the ignorance of people who objected to the word. It is very, very rarely used in a straightforward fashion. Even though it is etymologically distinct from the epithet, culturally it is inextricably bound to the epithet, such that it’s nearly impossible to use “niggardly” without invoking the epithet in the audience’s mind. Careful writers are aware of how their language affects the audience, and should take that cultural tie into consideration.
Interesting. The rhyme with Vega I get. Colloquial 那个 used to mean “um” is even listed in the some dictionaries as being pronounced nei4(ge). But there isn’t really a Chinese morpheme that corresponds to a rhyme with digger, is there? I wonder if that’s some kind of Shanghainese accent or something.
It appears in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”…whether it was lifted from Hamlet, I don’t remember.
I’m not particularly worried about “niggardly”, anyway, because I can count on the fingers of one elbow the number of times I’ve actually had occasion to use that word, anyway.
It’s one of those words that was never commonly used anyway. So when somebody does, it sounds contrived. Plus, there are just better alternatives.
I just say stingy, cheap or miserly.
What does any of that have to do with the topic? :dubious:
I listened to some Redd Foxx stand-up the other night. Funny shit!
Yes that’s possible. I do travel to other chinese cities from time to time, but didn’t have occasion to notice if people there used “nig” or “nayg”.
As for the point about morphemes, you’re right, but note that most of the sounds don’t map perfectly to English phonemes. So it could be that “a” in pinyin isn’t exactly what we think of as “a” as in “cat”. Or “ei”.
Now that I think of it, 这个 also often sounds like it rhymes with “digger”, yet that’s not even the same final in pinyin.
It’s a tough language to learn…
I’ve only seen the word ‘niggardly’ used ONCE in a context other than debating why it is or isn’t okay to use. Seems the word is basically obsolete.
(IF you’re curious: Mr. Rochester uses it to mock-chide Jane when she refuses to give him back some money in “Jane Eyre.”)