I am being told by two facebook “friends” that I’m just too young to remember how, in the fifties and sixties, many black people demanded to be called “nigger” as a term of respect.
I dismiss this claim out of hand. But here I just want to be absolutely sure that’s the right response…
I grew up in the fifties and sixties and never heard that at all.
Welp here’s hoping I’m right because I just informed them that they are blatant liars.
Just checked with 71 year old parents, one from Detroit and one from the Deep South. Nope. There was a time when negro was preferrable to black, but I can’t recall any historical, cultural, or literary evidence that any person of color preferred to be addressed by the perjorative version of negro.
Well, maybe back in the eighteen fifties and sixties. But even then I’d say it’s doubtful.
I was in elementary school in Pennsylvania in the early 70s, and the word was used a lot, but never in a respectful way.
I grew up in Pennsylvania in the 60s and was taught that “nigger” was rude and disrespectful and never to be used. “Colored” and “Negro” were considered to be acceptable terms, though.
Washington D.C. area in the 50’s & 60’s and the same thing. “Colored” was fading out in the 60’s, and “black” became acceptable – and in short order preferable – after James Brown’s 1968 hit “Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
Blacks demanding to be called “nigger?” By white folk? It is to laugh.
I don’t know if this is what the OP is looking for, but this may be relevant:
There was a time in the 1970’s when somehow the social trend known as “black pride” got expressed as a cultural meme and genre of movies called Blaxploitation. Back then, black actors could proudly star in movies with titles that today I am embarrassed to type :
“Boss Nigger” , “the Legend of Nigger Charlie”.
There is site called blaxploitationpride which looks with fond nostalgia on those films, which were popular with black audiences.
Even when ‘nigger’ was just a variation of the word ‘negro’ it was not used in a respectful manner, neutral at best, and rarely then since in this context it denoted a slave or second class citizen even for a free person. The ironic use of the word now might be intended to convey respect in some circumstances, but certainly not in the way the OP implies.
…only when preceded by “mister”
When I was taught the counting-out rhyme, “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe.” in the very early fifties, I was taught it as “Catch a tiger by the toe” which honestly never made any sense to me nor why he’d holler rather than bite my head off if I did.
It was many years later I learned the original version, and my parents explained that the n-word was very offensive and was not to be used. My older cousins said the same thing so unless they were retaught, I suspect the word was considered offensive back in the late forties as well.
Never. “Negro” was a OK term for quite some time. True, as Chappachula sez, there has been some acceptable use of the N word between Blacks themselves.
They are confusing “negro” with n*****. Negro was an accepted term. For example, the United Negro College Fund.
In my life I have seen colored, negro, Afro-American, black, African American, and people of color come in and out of vogue. The n-word was never acceptable. Your friends are idiots and apologists.
I grew up in the 40s and 50s and it was utterly disrespectful. I heard it occasionally, but never used it. It was a real no-no. Once upon a time, I have heard but never verified, it was just a variant of the Spanish word for black. Like “negro”, which was the preferred term (“black” wasn’t used) in 1950.
I grew up in Ca. and it was always disrespectful as far back as I remember. I started making trips to poor southern rural Mississippi in the lat 1960’s and it seemd to be used in a neutral manner at least that was my impression. The more well to do or even middle class used it in a disrespectful manner.
They’re either misinformed, misremembering, misunderstanding, misspelling or misbehaving.
I strongly dislike absolutes; there are too many ‘black swans’, so to speak, on the horizons to make absolutes valid. In the small Northern town I grew up in, there were only about a dozen black families. To my grandfather, who was their county supervisor, and my father, they were “niggers” – but not in any pejorative sense; they were people good as us whose adults deserved the respect of me and my friends simply for being adults, and whose kids deserved the appropriate level of friendship from us. There were things you dared not call them if you enjoyed sitting, but “nigger” was neutral and descriptive, not an insult. This was obviously a local usage, and I learned what was acceptable in the wider world as I grew up, but it is a datum of interest in one 30,000-pop. town in the 1950s.
While we’re on the topic of racial usage, I need to check out the post-modern evolution of a term with Mr Dibble. As I understand it, the use of “Hottentots” for the Khoikhoin of South Africa – who are NOT Bantu – is deeply offensive to them, but their largely mixed-race descendants may be called Coloured – capital C and tmetic -u- mandatory – without giving offense. This is not equivalent to “Colored” as euphemistic for “black” but the specific-to-the-racial-group term apptopriate to identify them. If it has become offensive since the end of Apartheid, I have not heard that, which is why I’m bringing it up, as Mr Dibble is ethnically a member of them.
Unfortunately, they’re not. Part of the claim they were making was that nigger was the polite term before negro was. And they were claiming to know this from personal memories of the era. Because they are liars.
Facebook “friends” indeed…
Southerners (LBJ for one) would pronounce negro as nigrah, not to be offensive, that was simply the way they pronounced the word. I wonder if your friends are confusing nigrah for nigger, there’s certainly little difference between the sound of the words.