# Check my intuition here--the N word was never respectful, correct? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 28, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135 "2013-06-28T16:21:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/21 "2013-06-28T21:12:43Z")
Even in cases where ‘nigger’ might be used in a disrespectful manner, or not intended to be, I doubt there is any situation such as described in the OP where is was _respectful_. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/22 "2013-06-28T23:03:25Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > 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 grew up in the fifties. My father might occasionally use the word, but he would lower his voice or act a bit sheepish when he did around us kids. As kids, we used the version of eenie, meenie, minie, mo with that word, but we knew it was a bit “naughty” (although it wasn’t as taboo as it is today). The idea that blacks in the fifties demanded to be called that word as a term of respect is ludicrous in the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/23 "2013-06-28T23:14:43Z")
Technically, I suppose, there was one way in the 60s where it was _intended_ to be respectful, but was not taken that way. Southerners who tried to be respectful back then did use “Negro” to refer to Blacks. However, in some accents, this was pronounced “Nigra.” Northerners thought this was a mispronunciation of the more offensive word. ---
**Author:** ![Enginerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bcef8e/32.png) [@Enginerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enginerd)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/24 "2013-06-28T23:24:02Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > 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… So what’s Paula Dean doing these days with all that unexpected free time? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/25 "2013-06-28T23:30:38Z")
> [@Enginerd](#): > > So what’s Paula Dean doing these days with all that unexpected free time? You joke, but I’m guessing that was the context this all came up in. ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2013, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/26 "2013-06-28T23:44:22Z")
It may have been used as a referential term but not as a respectful term. Kids might have used it on the playground but not in front of their parents or teachers unless those people were outright racists. The term hadn’t quite acquired the blatant racial stigma that it has now but it was not respectful at all. “Black” replaced “Negro” around the time of the '60’s, I guess because the civil rights movement was more comfortable with being identified with being black rather than negro. They probably wanted to disassociate themselves from any identity that began with the letter “n”. I suppose that back around the Civil War to turn of the century the “n” word was somewhat neutral. Mark Twain used it in his novels without disrespect. The nuances of language change over time. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/27 "2013-06-29T00:25:50Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Technically, I suppose, there was one way in the 60s where it was _intended_ to be respectful, but was not taken that way. > > Southerners who tried to be respectful back then did use “Negro” to refer to Blacks. However, in some accents, this was pronounced “Nigra.” Northerners thought this was a mispronunciation of the more offensive word. I’d always assumed that nigger was a diminutive of Negro in the first place. But, [apparently not](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nigger). Same root, but by [different methods](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Negro). BTW, that first citation includes a statement that even the first usage of the term was derogatory, if you want to go that route with these “friends.” ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/28 "2013-06-29T01:42:01Z")
It’s pretty clear from the slave narratives that “nigger” was both offensive and low-class even in the 1850s. In _Incident of the Life of a Slave Girl_, Harriet Jacobs, the narrator, only depicts either low-class white people using the word, or middle-class white people when they are at their ugliest. There may be one spot where an old, illiterate slave uses it in a deliberately self-deprecating fashion. Whether or not she’s 100% faithfully recording what people said is beside the point: she clearly felt like her audience–middle class northerners–would have strong negative reactions to the word. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/29 "2013-06-29T02:34:10Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > 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. Heck, even Roddenberry had [Abe Lincoln call Uhura, _“a charming nigress…”_!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ln40Vukq4k) Although the clip ends Lincoln then realizes he may have made a serious faux pas, but Uhura reassures him that she wasn’t offended. This scene used to get edited out back in early syndication. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/30 "2013-06-29T03:57:45Z")
Certainly never a term of respect, but in my memory it was not always the unspeakable term that it has become. In the Mid-South (East Texas) in the 1960s, we knew it was not the respectful term (that was still _colored)_, but the mere utterance didn’t seem to always incorporate disapproval—much less hatred. My father might speak of something being “over by the nigger church” or tell of giving directions to a “nigger man” at the filling station. The sense of separateness was always there, but not the sense of less-than-human or even disrepect, necessarily. As I’ve been reflecting on it this week, I think it was somewhat similar to _oriental_. Those of you who grew up in other places and other cultures may find this unbelievable. I don’t mean to minimize the surrounding culture of segregation and oppression. I know _nigger_ was used in many hateful, shameful situations. But that wasn’t its **only** use. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/31 "2013-06-29T04:29:36Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > 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… Give that nigger derivates from negro, they need to see a proctologist. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/32 "2013-06-29T05:14:00Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Give that nigger derivates from negro, they need to see a proctologist. Would that be a cranial proctologist? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kolak_of_twilo/32/73_2.png) [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/33 "2013-06-29T06:26:10Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Welp here’s hoping I’m right because I just informed them that they are blatant liars. I grew up in the Gulf Coast area of Texas in the early 60’s. My parents made it very clear early in my life that use of the word “nigger” was inappropriate and low class. It’s use was a guaranteed way to get a serious swat on the rear and possibly a very soapy mouth. And you were right. Your friends are liars. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/34 "2013-06-29T09:26:04Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Heck, even Roddenberry had [Abe Lincoln call Uhura, _“a charming nigress…”_!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ln40Vukq4k) Although the clip ends Lincoln then realizes he may have made a serious faux pas, but Uhura reassures him that she wasn’t offended. This scene used to get edited out back in early syndication. Negress, which is the female version of “Negro”. It’s dated now, as is Negro, but was acceptable at one time. Interestingly, though, I did find a Time Magazine article from 1931. . . > [@](#): > > When Negroes are mentioned in the “white” Press, they would be most pleased if no point were made of their color. White newspapers, they argue, do not specify the color of white-skins. If color must be designated, they can bear to see “John Doe, Negro,” “Jane Doe, colored woman,” but never “Jane Doe, Negress.” Last week the Pittsburgh Courier (Negro weekly) proudly told as important news how the great New York Herald Tribune had apologized for using the word “Negress” in an obscure news item concerning one Susie Lynch. Texas-born City Editor Stanley Walker of the Herald Tribune was quoted by the Courier’s Floyd J. Calvin: “We did not mean to use the word and of course apologize for it. There is a positive ‘don’t’ against the use of the word here in the office. I don’t know how it happened to slip by me.” ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/35 "2013-06-29T11:24:33Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Heck, even Roddenberry had [Abe Lincoln call Uhura, _“a charming nigress…”_!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ln40Vukq4k) Although the clip ends Lincoln then realizes he may have made a serious faux pas, but Uhura reassures him that she wasn’t offended. This scene used to get edited out back in early syndication. The word “negress” was for a long time an acceptable feminine form of “negro”, and it was pretty typical of the books I grew up reading to refer to black women this way. Now, both are deprecated, and in addition feminine forms in general are becoming deprecated. I think “nigress” is more a spelling variant of this than a feminine form of the n-word. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/36 "2013-06-29T11:31:09Z")
> [@R.P.McMurphy](#): > > Mark Twain used it in his novels without disrespect. The nuances of language change over time. I remember Twain using the word regarding the character Jim, in Huckleberry Finn (hope I remember correctly). I think Twain meant no disrespect himself toward black people, but he did mean his characters to use the word disrespectfully – and Twain himself was being disrespectful of people who used the word. That said, the word was not loaded in the same way then that it is now. On the one hand, it was used much more often, and might be used in a way that was fairly neutral regarding the intent to be disrespectful (though never used by whites in a way that was intended to be respectful per se). This seems to imply using the word was less harmful then than now. On the other hand, its use fit into a bigger system of abuse of black people, and the ease with which white people used it reinforced how pervasive and complete this system was, which in a sense made its use more harmful then. At least, this is how it seems to me. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/37 "2013-06-29T11:31:40Z")
For the OP: The closest I can imagine to the infamous N-word being acceptable was one pronunciation of the word _Negro_, said pronunciation heard more than a few times by yours truly in Richmond, Virginia and the surrounding area in the 1970s and early 1980s. That pronunciation was _Nigra_. I’d think it’s fairly obvious why it fell out of favor in the ensuing years. I have no idea at all if that pronunciation was current anywhere else in the country. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/38 "2013-06-29T12:13:22Z")
> [@R.P.McMurphy](#): > > I suppose that back around the Civil War to turn of the century the “n” word was somewhat neutral. Mark Twain used it in his novels without disrespect. The nuances of language change over time. > [@Napier](#): > > I remember Twain using the word regarding the character Jim, in Huckleberry Finn (hope I remember correctly). I think Twain meant no disrespect himself toward black people, but he did mean his characters to use the word disrespectfully – and Twain himself was being disrespectful of people who used the word. McMurphy, see my earlier post about slave narratives: Fredrick Douglass never called himself a nigger without irony. He did call himself a negro. In Huck Finn, “nigger” is used pretty obviously as a dehumanizing, trashy term. In the famous epiphany scene, Huck is worried about helping a “nigger” and being ashamed of that an stealing a “nigger” and on and on. But word drops out when the montage of memories starts: it’s Jim this and Jim that. Or in this famous exchange [paraphrased]: “Anybody hurt?” “No, couple niggers killed” “Well, thank goodness for that”. “Nigger” in Huck Finn is not common because it was not dehumanizing. It’s common because dehumanizing African Americans was common. I mean, twenty years ago (and even today) it wasn’t uncommon to hear “faggot” this and “faggot” that in the locker room. Does that mean “faggot” wasn’t that insulting of a term, since lots of people used it? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/39 "2013-06-29T12:41:43Z")
No. My Yankee mother thought that my dad’s (South Georgia) mom said “nigger” because that was an appropriate term when she was young, just like her own parents said “colored” their whole lives. When I was, like, eighteen I finally disabused her of that one. I mean, it took me that long to figure it out on my own because my mom would make that excuse for Granny. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2013, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135/40 "2013-06-29T12:47:45Z")
It was disrespectful to call someone a N when you addressed them. I often heard my older Grandparents say “Junie is a really hard working N”. It was a sincere compliment. But my Grandmother would never in a million years walk up to someone and say “Hey N”. That just wasn’t done in polite coversation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/check-my-intuition-here-the-n-word-was-never-respectful-correct/662135.md?page=3)