TBH, the “monkey” version itself is pretty susceptible to accusations of racism, given the association between “monkey” and “Black” in racist circles. And the victims of that are more than aware of the connection.
My own data point (as a 50-year-old American, mostly military brat so largely free of regional influences) is that I learned “tiger” but always thought “hollered” was an unrealistic thing for a large predatory cat to do. (If you grab a tiger’s toe hard enough to make him “holler”, that’s more than hard enough for him to rear back and rip your head off.)
When I heard the “N-word” version, it was as a teen, when my father and I were discussing the checkered history of that word in popular usage, including the fairly common name for Brazil nuts. (He was a child of a retired sailor from New York City, so got exposed to a lot of early-20th-Century casual racism. I think he did a lot better than that by us.)
I never heard anyone use anything but “tiger” until I was an adult.
Same for the counting rhyme, “ten little indians.” I was amazed to find out that the original title of Agatha Christie’s famous mystery was “Ten Little Niggers.” (Now dodged completely by the title And Then There Were None.)
I grew up in the 50s and 60s. The world was definitely and obviously racist, but kids were sheltered from a lot of it. If I used eeny, meeny today it would undoubtedly never enter my head to finish it any way other than with tiger.
“Tiger” is also quite racist, for similar reasons—mostly the way the story of Little Black Sambo was illustrated in the USA. (The lack of tigers in Africa doesn’t seem to have been noted.)
I downloaded the Italian audiobook and was quite surprised to find they had retained the word for the name of the island. I guess the racist connotations were lost on the Italian translators and readers, or else they didn’t care.
“Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe
Catch a (African American) by the toe.
If he hollers make him pay
fifty dollars every day.
My - mother - told - me - to - pick - YOU!”
One was quite careful in using the original identifier word. Our neighborhood was not lily-white, and even as moronic urchins we knew it was a very bad word that could get you in very big trouble with parents and peers.
I spent the first six years of my life in the UK. It was definitely the nigger version for me, and I’m still imprinted with it. I remember using the rhyme in Canada and my neighbours telling me that’s not a nice word. I had no idea why it was not a nice word.
I think we (in Canada) used to substitute something other than tiger though, but I don’t recall what.
He certainly has a track record of being brash, insensitive, opinionated, ignorant and blokeish, but in previous cases (at least to my knowledge), he chooses to be offensive in such a way that his apology can be sarcastic or stage-insincere.
It may be that this is another of those, and that he overstepped the mark, or thought about overstepping it and changed his mind after shooting, but given the apparent contrition of his apology (which I dont recall seeing previously), I tend to think this could have been a genuine mistake.
Eh, I kind of expect an adult to understand that it’s inappropriate to mumble nigger and he should have known immediately to sub another word or another rhyme. That he didn’t bespeaks a lack of thoughtfulness or caring that I would find disappointing if I didn’t already consider him the second worst television personality the UK has seen fit to inflict upon is.
While in general this is true, the culture differences make this more likely. For example, I don’t know if an American would think twice about using the work “Paki” but it’s a very bad word elsewhere. I don’t know if that would apply in this instance.
My story is similar. I’m in Canada, and I grew up in the 70s. I learned the “nigger” version first, I assume at school. I remember one day when I was probably about six, I was trying to decide between a couple of options in a toy store. When I said the rhyme (presumably nearby other people in the toy store aisle) my mom quickly told me I should say “tiger” instead, because “nigger” is a bad word. But I had never had any idea what it meant until several years later.
I also got in trouble from my mom once for using the word “bugger” as an insult (“that kid’s a little bugger” or something), and I also had no idea why “bugger” was a bad word until much later. But I do remember thinking maybe the two words were related in some way, because they’re somewhat similar and both are BAD WORDS.
That doesn’t strike me as the most scholarly or authoritative of Wikipedia entries. Remember any joker can write whatever he wants there!
However, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a variety of versions with different victims.
Evidently my neighborhood was unusual. We ended it with “My mother says to pick the very best one and you are [not] it!” (We’d include or omit “not” based on whim. It didn’t take us long to figure that it didn’t affect the outcome, with only two subjects.) That was early 60’s. We used “tiger”.
The “If he hollers make him pay fifty dollars every day” was also popular.
I agree, it’s not even well written (the section headed ‘earlier version’ is actually describing something later than some of the versions above it.
I’m not sure I could ever prove it, but I suspect its earliest origins don’t name any victims and are probably mouth music or simple counting rhymes similar in construct to Yan Tan Tethera
I grew up in NC and my wife is from GA. We were born in the late 60s/early 70s. Neither of us knew that it was anything other that “tiger” until much later in life.
Black children in Memphis, at least during the 70s and 80s, always said “nickel.” At least in my neighborhood. Which made no sense, but I was not in charge.
You have to define what the parameters are of a “version.” You seem to be talking about counting-out rhymes in general, in which case you’re probably correct, but the evidence is clearer that this particular version did originate in the USA, probably in the decades following the Civil War.
The source cited by Wikipedia, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, is one of the best places to go for things like this. It cites copious evidence that the first line is pretty ancient (found in many variants and with a ton of difference second lines), but also that the heyday of the rhyme under discussion was the 1880s through the 1950s.
Not so coincidentally, if you add a decade or two on either side, this is also the period when tension about black people was highest in US society.
In this case, I probably would set it as loosely as ‘a rhyme with a first line that sounds like "Eeny Meeny Miney Moe, followed by something else’.
Some versions are clearly more closely related than others.
I’m quite happy to concede that, as a playground counting rhyme, the early/popular versions recognisably similar to the modern ‘tiger’ variation probably did feature the N word (or to put it another way, earlier related, non-racist versions probably existed, but may never have featured as popular playground counting rhymes)
I learnt it as as “tiger” in a Saskatchewan small town in the 60s (sometimes pronounced “Tay-ger” in Saskatchewanese). Didn’t learn the alternative version until much later. Didn’t know what it meant, but I have a hazy memory of my mom saying, “We don’t use that word, dear.”
When I was a young child of 5 or 6, I knew this as “tiger”. My grandmother, born in the 19th century, happened to choose between my brother and me using this method using a different word. A word that apparently I knew as a bad word not to be said. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but I knew it was bad.
