My mother tried telling me the other day that when she was a kid, the word “booger” was used as a slur against blacks. I’ve personally never heard of this, nor can I find anything online. Maybe she’s thinking of “boogey” or something, but booger? Call me a skeptic on this one. :dubious:
I’ve heard country people use “booger” to mean something like “boogeyman.”
I’ve never heard that usage. “Boogie” was certainly sometimes used as a disparaging term for blacks; probably your mother is confusing this with booger.
My recollection, too (agreeing with Colibri). Although I heard it used only onscreen and not real life, so maybe it was mostly regional?
Was that short for “jigaboo”, maybe?
Booger was used as a slur for blacks by some people. The old wives tales didn’t mean it was a black man though. It was more like a nasty bigfoot was going to get you.
Looking at American Memory articles Booger is used as a swear word for something giving you trouble. The 3 articles I found that weren’t about a rider called Red Booger were in this context. A lawman looking for your illegal booze. A polecat in a herd of cattle causing a stampede. Indians looking to cause trouble for settlers. As you see it’s used for different things that bodes bad things to the person using booger.
It’s used here in this version of Dustin Hoffman doing a Lenny Bruce routine in the movie “Lenny.”
I found a few old books using booger in the usual haint context.
In the text of stories from freed slaves I found booger as the term for a Ku Klux man one had encountered at night at a well.
The rider I mentioned above was Booger Red.
No evidence that it was. Colibri’s cite for boogie is correct. Possibly an alteration of bogey.