# G.K. Chesterton, early 20th cen. England, and the N-word **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2017, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720 "2017-02-13T00:27:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/81 "2017-02-16T13:51:09Z")
I think Chesterton used the term because [list=A][li]There were hardly any black people in Britain at the time, and[/li][li]Black people can’t read anyway, so they won’t see it, and[/li][li]Even if one of them reads it and is offended, who cares? They’re just niggers.[/list]Is that racist? Of course it is. Was it a reflection of the casual racism of British society at the time? Yes, it was. Was British society any worse than other societies? No, they were just more powerful. Was it any better? No. [/li] Thinking of, and referring to, strangers who are outside your own ethos as inferior is nearly universal. And wrong. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/82 "2017-02-16T14:06:14Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] Even if one of them reads it and is offended, who cares? They’re just niggers. [/quote] As a very devout christian, and not a retired colonel living in a Bloomsbury lodging-house on half-pay, it is kinda impossible Chesterton would have thought this way. > [@](#): > > Thinking of, and referring to, strangers who are outside your own ethos as inferior is nearly universal. And wrong. Thank you for speaking out so courageously. We needed that. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/83 "2017-02-16T14:20:37Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > See the 1955 British movie ‘The Dam Busters’. It’s a true classic, an unforgettable movie, with wonderfully stirring theme, but there is a dog in the movie called ‘Nigger’. That didn’t raise an eyebrow in Britain in 1955, and wasn’t considered offensive. There was a dog with that name in Sinclair Lewis’ 1947 novel _Kingsblood Royal_. In a memorable scene, the clueless (and casually racist) white couple who owned the dog were at the back door calling for him by name, only to get bawled out by their black maid. Using the word probably hung on longer in Britain because there were relatively few black people to call out the offenders. Not knowing much about him, I wouldn’t jump to call Chesterton a racist, any more than I’d attack Mark Twain for using the word “nigger” in Huck Finn. This thread reminds me of 8th grade English class, where we were assigned Booth Tarkington’s “Penrod and Sam” (the book featured two “Negro boys who lived across the alley” and were named Herman and Verman). I remember the teacher cautioning us to notice the racist implications of the book, while appreciating its literary qualities. I sort of doubt that any of the Penrod books are assigned reading for students these days. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/84 "2017-02-16T14:23:05Z")
I wish I could say that every devout Christian I knew was never bigoted about people he had never met. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/85 "2017-02-16T14:45:32Z")
I should imagine that 60% of devout American christians are so bigoted, and as many devout jews. And maybe more devout muslims. On the other hand Chesterton took Papal Encyclicals immensely seriously — instead of as I would were I christian take-it-or-leave-it suggestions — plus he came from an artistic family background and milieu ( rather as Kipling did ) which generally includes racial inclusiveness and tolerance. Plus he early protested against Empire , especially the 2nd Boer War. You may be confusing him with A. K. Chesterton. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/86 "2017-02-16T17:31:18Z")
No, it’s G.K. Read _The Everlasting Man_, where he refers to “niggers worshipping JuJu” (quoted from memory). Maybe if somebody were around to call him on it, he would have cared or noticed, but nobody was. It’s just the way things were. It never occurred to anyone that anyone would be offended. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/87 "2017-02-16T17:59:16Z")
I assume you mean this: _‘Did a man whose totem was a wolf feel like a were-wolf or like a man running away from a were-wolf ? Did be feel like Uncle Remus about Brer Wolf or like St. Francis about his brother the wolf, or like Mowgli about his brothers the wolves ? Was a totem a thing like the British lion or a thing like the British bull-dog ? Was the worship of a totem like the feeling of blacks about Mumbo jumbo, or of children about jumbo ?’_ Firstly, blacks. Secondly, nothing disparaging. Actually has a touch of the melancholy of Thomas Browne. Anyway, had it been, ‘nigger’ to a late 19th century/early 20th century Briton, which was when he grew up would have been as inoffensively meant as the slightly earlier construction ‘blackfellow’. _Unless_ purposed as an epithet by a fucking foreman. Still, cutting sugar-cane was rather more offensive than the insults of the ignorant. Which reminds me, had an old cook-book, or _vade-mecum_ from the 1850s that gave a _Blackfella’s Guide to Cooking Rice_. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/88 "2017-02-16T18:17:10Z")
It was “nigger” in the copy I have at home. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/89 "2017-02-16T18:25:08Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > And he contrasts it with _gentlemen_. That is, he places it within his own view that _class_ is the important distinction, and that “nigger” is a class term, not a race term. > > He won’t use the word “nigger” because it implies an inferior class, as the word “gardener” would. He won’t call all Africans “gardeners”, because some of them are “gentlemen”. That doesn’t mean that he thinks the word “nigger” is peculiarly offensive, any more than “gardener” is, just that he thinks class judgements shouldn’t be based on race. > > And he calls out that he differs from the ordinary English view in this, which was that class is based on breeding. I don’t agree. He refused to use the word because he said he didn’t like the _word_. If it was a neutral word that was merely inaccurate because not all Blacks fell within that “class”, why would the narrator claim he didn’t like the word itself? I don’t dislike the word “gardener” just because someone uses it improperly. The evidence makes much more sense if the word itself had a derogatory connotation. Edit: moreover, I don’t think he was using the term “gentleman” in the sense of a distinct class. He appears to mean something more like ‘man of superior ethics and courage’. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/90 "2017-02-16T23:59:00Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > It was “nigger” in the copy I have at home. It is “niggers” in every other edition of _The Everlasting Man_ that I have ever seen, such as [this one](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100311h.html): > [@](#): > > Was a totem a thing like the British lion or a thing like the British bull-dog? Was the worship of a totem like the feeling of niggers about Mumbo Jumbo, or of children about Jumbo? […] > > In a hundred forms we are told that heaven and earth were once lovers, or were once at one, when some upstart thing, often some undutiful child, thrust them apart […] One of its most charming versions was that of some savage niggers, who say that a little pepper-plant grew taller and taller and lifted the whole sky like a lid; a beautiful barbaric vision of daybreak for some of our painters who love that tropical twilight. I suspect **Evan Drake** ’s online [edition](https://books.google.com/books?id=baVs6rEi694C&pg=PT103) was bowdlerized in transcription/editing (in addition, the original “savage niggers” in the second excerpt becomes “savage Negroes” in **Evan Drake** ’s version, and the editor doesn’t seem to have realized that the “jumbo” that entranced children was the proper name of [Jumbo the famous elephant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo)). ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/91 "2017-02-17T16:20:19Z")
Don’t forget Joseph Conrad’s book _The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’_ (1897). This is regarded as one of Conrad’s best works, and in a recent online discussion an English lecturer was lamenting that it’s simply not possible to teach it these days. But the word was not used in a derogatory way. It was similar to Mark Twain’s use in Huckleberry Finn. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that words that are offensive today were always offensive. In origin the word comes from Latin ‘niger’, Spanish ‘negro’, simply meaning ‘black’. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2017, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720/92 "2017-02-17T16:59:56Z")
And indeed, Engels, on the atrocious behaviour of Governor Eyre of Jamaica — a cause celebre back home with Eyre attacked like many imperial heavy-handed tyrants by most of Britain — wrote and asked old Karl what he thought about the Nigger Question in Jamaica ( actually, it was slightly complicated, as just as the British treatment of the Thugs in India was disgraceful, so were the Thugs themselves ). Marx — who was not a Jew — condemned the British as one would expect, but both he and his friend, representing as far left as one could go back then before hitting Kropotkin, regularly spoke of Niggers and Yids. Particularly when discussing Lassalle. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/g-k-chesterton-early-20th-cen-england-and-the-n-word/779720.md?page=4)