Wigger! WTF!!

The BBQ Pit
1

In this thread a poster used the term “wigger” to refer to the singer Pink. I didn’t want to hijack that thread to declare my distain for the word, which is a term for white people who adopt the “urban black” culture and often hang with black folk and listen to rap.

The term is obviously a mix of “white” and the pejorative “n-word” (which I refuse to type or say even in an intellectual discussion).

I find that white people who use the term pejoratively, as did the poster in the thread linked above, are apt to use the original version also. Therefore, I treat the words the same (except I will type wigger). The black folk I’ve known who use the term don’t use it as pejoratively, but usually slightly condescendingly to indicate someone they think is trying too hard to fit in, almost as a synomyn for “wannabe”.

What do you other posters think of the word? Do you find its use offensive, as do I. Or am I making too much of it?

Although this isn’t much of a flame, I feel like it could become one so I’m starting it here in the Pit.

2

Just so that I understand, a wigger is a white person who is trying to act black?

This is dumb on SO many levels. First it assumes that all black people are niggers. Second, what the hell is ‘acting black’? Conversely, can a black person ‘act white’?

Sigh.

3

Acting like, dressing like, and generally adopting the persona of the “typical” hip black guy as portrayed in film, television, and music video.

Apparantly some people think so, or there wouldn’t be terms like “oreo.”
To the OP, I honestly had not realized the derivation of “wigger.” Bleeeech.

4

I always thought it was another word for “booger”, as in:

(goofy music accompanies the lyric)

“What does an elephant have up its trunk? (dum-dum-dum-dum) an eight-foot wigger!”

JAY-zuz!

5

I have a serious problem with the insult of “wigger” because thats my last name.

Seriously.

6

Yikes, this is one big, ol’ minefield!

Regarding wigger, I think that the word is too vulgar to be used, period. I find it offensive mostly because of the word’s origin, but also because it doesn’t make sense.

Take Eminem and Rupaul. Which one is more authentically “black”? Eminem because he wears a do rag and raps? Or Rupaul, who wears blond wigs and sings showtunes, but who is also undeniably black?

Who says that street culture is black to begin with? Latinos in LA rap, wear ski caps, and slap down fools. So, too, do Vietnamese and Chinese gangbangers. It doesn’t make sense that because somebody busts rhymes, wears some gold chains, and calls his circle of friends his “posse” that he necessarily wants to be black.

Chris Rock has a whole routine based on that.

Well, if you think that all white people behave in a certain way, and that all black people behave in an equally monolithic but opposite way from whites, then I guess so.

How do you define “blackness”? Is it measured by the melanin in one’s skin? Is it adopting a culture? It it in how you speak and act? How do you define “whiteness”? Is speaking standard
English “white”? Then goodbye James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman. Is being “smooth” somehow inherently black? Then what about Steve Urkel?

Is Eddie Griffin, who plays the same funked-up street hustler stereotype in all his movies, “blacker” than Will Smith, who plays educated professionals? Is Eric Clapton, one of the most accomplished blues musicians in the world, “blacker” than Charley Pride?

It just seems to me extremely foolish, living as I do in the US of A, that any set of behaviors or attitudes can be linked primarily to one race or ethnic group. There are white folks who eat BBQ ribs and there are black folks who eat Vietnamese food. There are Korean rappers and Hispanic tennis players. All of us have got a little bit of everybody else inside us.

7

It’s not as bad as it sounds, initially. It’s a lot easier to understand if you’ve been exposed to hordes of suburban teens that emulate the hip-hop crowd.

There’s a certain surreal, (yes, even tragi-comic,) cognitive dissonance that comes of observing a dozen snotty kids trying to act like gangsters while hangin’ at the local mall.

Typical exchange:

They have no idea that adopting such a “hard” vocabulary only emphasizes their insular suburban qualities.

I would never use the term “wigger” – (mostly because it sounds stupid,) but I don’t think to use it you must buy into racial stereotypes, since the people it’s applied to use the word “nigger” to refer to their peers, without a racial context – more in the “woman is the nigger of the world” sense. Much the way the “Beat” generation used the word “Beat” – to signify someone who is “out of the game” – down, and therefore worthy of trust & respect.

The whole phenomenon of “ghetto” fashion – kids dropping hundreds of dollars to emulate other kids whose clothes don’t fit because they’re hand-me-downs, is co-opting a look that has long been associated with a particular economic (and racial) class. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the vestigial racial connotations of the style are largely forgotten, and it is simply part of mainstream culture. Like the way denim pants crept into the mainstream-- Very few people look at a pair of jeans today and think “slave gear”, but only forty years ago that was still the consensus view. Hell, even my youthful self recalls when “Designer” jeans were considered a passing fad by many. How long would people be suckered into paying top-dollar for cheap material that’s only fit for the poor?

Ah well, I can’t make too much fun of kids that try so hard to copy something that they are manifestly are not. When I was 13 and 14, I devoted considerable energy to trying to be as “Jewish” as I could manage. I don’t imagine that it could have looked any less silly.

The only thing that bums me out is that all these kids get into it as fashion-victims. Cultural appropriation could be so liberating if people didn’t do it in herds, and all the kids picked cultures that appealled to them on a personal level.

“Mom, Dad-- I’m going to be an Indian woman.” :smiley:

8

Well as someone whose been called a oreo on more than one occasion agree that wigger is way offensive. It’s origin is repulsive and the speaker of such a word is demonstrating not only his disdain for the accused, but blacks as well.

9

My mother has an old LP of Charlie Pride performing live. The album even contains the comments he makes between songs and such. He tells a funny story from when he was first getting started. He said he walks out on stage and starts the first song when an old woman stands up on the front row, points and him and shouts
“IT’S TRUE! IT’S TRUE!”

10

I’ve been called a “wigger”.
I don’t dress in “ghetto fashion”, I don’t use hip-hop lingo, Hell, I don’t like Limp Bizkit or Emenem.
I do like hip-hop music in general, and have several black friends- apparently that is enough to make a long haired hippie a “wigger” to some.

11

Back in the 70’s when Charley Pride was in his prime, he came to Savannah to do a concert. My parents are big fans of his. The makeup of the audience was predominately white. There were several blacks who bought tickets for the sole reason to harass Charley. He was being accused of “selling out” by playing “white” music. Charley stopped the concert to address these issues. He told the hecklers that he was performing the music he grew up with, no more, no less. This didn’t satisfy the hecklers. So Charley had security escort the hecklers out of the auditorium AND refund their tickets. He apologized to the rest of the audience saying that he had to deal with this sort of thing anytime he played in the south. He then completed the concert to thunderous applause.

12

I guess I’m really out of it. I thought wigger was someone who was “wigged” out on drugs.

ps I was happy to see, “Mom, Dad, I’m becoming an Indian woman” thanks for the laugh.

13

GoBear,

You have some valid points, but I think the reality may be somewhat less idyllic than, “All of us have got a little bit of everybody else inside us.”

The truth of the matter is, there is a subculture of young white males and females that fashion their dress, speech and personas after the “popular” black sterotype. I’ve heard a few honorifics bestowed upon these characters, but “wigger” and “wiggabee” are by far the most common.

We don’t have to like use of these terms, which in some small way reminds us of how much further we need to go as a society before we declare racism a thing of the past. We may also cringe with the pejoritive use.

The simple truth of the matter, though, is that it was coined as an easy term that identifies certain behaivor. Vulgar or not, it IS used and many people know what it’s use connotes - thus, I guess it qualifies as successful slang.

14

Another way of looking at it is the term, ** fag hag **

Doesn’t really appear that different to me…

15

The posters here who know my views are aware that I am no optimist. As I pointed out, the “wigger” phenomenon isn’t limited to clueless, suburban white kids who want to act "black. The “street” dress and slang pervade the youth culture of Asians, Hispanics, whites, and blacks.

16

Stuck Mojo did a great song about this phenomenon called Suburban Ranger. Some of the lyrics include:
Try to play that thug role you’re head is swole
Now you want to be all that you can be,
But not by the colors of the army!
Yo you in the wrong hood better knock on wood
Gold chains and gold rings you misunderstood
Trace back and look back you ain’t black
Nigga straight sneaking through the cracks.
(and the choris to the tune or Mr. Rogers’ “Who are the People in your Neighborhood”)
Who’s that wigga in my neighborhood,
In my neighborhood…
In my neighborhood…

Complete lyrics here

17

In an unrelated usage, Elvis Costello used the full phrase to refer to the Irish in Oliver’s Army:

“There was a Checkpoint Charlie
He didn’t crack a smile
But it’s no laughing party
When you’ve been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger”

18

What’s a fag hag? Or do I not want to know?

Even if I don’t really want to know, tell me anyway.

19

I know y’all will jump all over this one before I do, but…

A “fag hag” is a hetro (right?) woman who invariably choses homosexual men as friends.

[lighthearted sarcasm] In other words, female hairdressers. [/lighthearted sarcasm]

20

Re: “Fag hag”…

A friend of mine who pretty much meets the description abhors the term, and prefers the much funnier “fruit fly.”