Sorry Im not american so I wasnt quite sure what Imus was referring to. Was he implying some sort of headwear, the afro style of hair itself, or that the women were “heading” for nappies, presumably via (unmarried) pregnancy. (No debate on the actual statement please - its been done to death)
See definitions two, three, five and six on this Urban Dictionary entry.
“Nappy” is tightly coiled/kinky hair, usually unaltered/unwashed/natural.
“Nappy” refers to the kinky, tightly coiled hair often seen on African Americans. According to the cite, this term is often used specifically for unwashed/uncombed kinky hair, and so has connotations of “dirty” or “unkempt”.
Black hair, the curly kinked stereotypical black hair, has in and of itself been described as nappy, and blacks themselves as nappy-headed for a very long time. Since the 1950s according to the OED.
The nap of black hair has been an identifying factor even when the person is light skinned. Products to straighten or unkink black hair have been available for 100 years, especially for woman, and were used widely despite the strong chemicals involved. Until the afro gained prominence in the “black-is-beautiful” movement of the 60s and 70, nappy hair was a an embarrassment or a way to be put down.
It refers to the typical character of the hair of black African peoples, as in the Afro style. The word is sometimes used in a negative context, from mildly unapproving to mockingly derogatory. As you probably know, the other part of the statement, “hos”, is from modern slang for “whores”. This too is derogatory, but sometimes almost as a joke, and usually does not literally mean “whores/protitutes”.
You learn something every day…
In this part of the world, “Nappy” refers to what you lot in the US call “Diapers”.
I had this strange vision of a woman wearing absorbent undergarments on her head until this thread, so I’m glad that’s been clarified!
And nap, is a term used to refer to the texture of wool, isn’t it? Ok, I see not quite, via Wikipedia. It’s the way the hair/fur grows, and also a process in making flannel.
But it came to be known as any material that had a standing texture; wool, suede, etc. When Abraham Lincoln was running for president in his first term, his supporters identified themselves by wearing slick-surface coats, and called themseves “wide-awakes,” because they had no nap.
Here is a book that explains it.
Interestingly, and sadly, while that book was written by a black person and was a celebration of nappy hair, there was a vigorous and ugly reaction to its being read in a classroom, by people who apparently couldn’t think of the word “nappy” as being anything but a pejorative. See here.
Yeah, I’m aware. It made news in the last few years.
I figured out what ‘nappy’ meant from context, but (from this thread) WTF is a jigaboo?
It is a racial epithet. Not as much in common parlance as “nigger” but still very offensive.
Jigaboo is an old-fashioned racial epithet, and the person who speaks it is often an old-school racist, maybe even a Ku Klux Klan member. The KKK is a US racial hate group that started after our Civil War/War Of The Northern Aggression, in the late 1860s.
Pickaninny is another old-time rude word for a black child. There’s an artistic cliche of the pickaninny, with cartoonish exaggerated features. Some collectors seek out old ceramic figures and drawings in the genre. Many of those collectors are black.
If you’re prowling some musical databank, the musical play Hair had a whole song, Colored Spade, made up of black racial cliches. I’d link to it myself, but I’m an obsolete old cat, and it would take me longer to find it than it took you to read this. :smack:
In the U.S. Its relative, “pikny” (sometimes spelled pickney) is a common word for “child” in Jamaica, and doesn’t have the same negative connotation.
Just in case you (or other people) haven’t picked up on it from the other discussions, “jigaboo” in Imus’s case was being used in a specific context. It was a reference to Spike Lee’s movie “School Daze” (though the radio show got the movie wrong) in which the terms are used for two different competing groups.
That doesn’t mean the term isn’t as offensive as already pointed out. It’s a not unusual technique of Spike Lee’s - blatant and hyperbolic use of offensive terms or actions (cf. the movie Bamboozled).
I just want to make it clear, to those who seem to think that the inclusion of the word “jigaboo” in a film written and directed by Spike Lee means that it somehow all right to use, that the names of both these “competing groups” (the Jigaboos and the Wannabees,) were used as* insults*, within the film.
thank you everyone! i’m an australian so i really don’t “get it” either.
Just type colored spade lyrics into Google and go to the first hit.