Four Ways to Call Someone a Nigger Without Using the Word

Acceptable Ways to Use Infer Inferiority and Contempt Based on Race

Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, Charles Pickard Ware (editors), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The word “nigger” has rarely been positively used by white people. Some have mistakenly thought it was okay to use the term in the same way as sometimes used by Black people in their attempts to take back the power of the word. Others found that when they sang along with the lyrics of songs containing the word, it was more than frowned upon. Nigger has generally ceased to be acceptable in mixed-race company, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Historically, nigger has been used to describe commercial products, flowers, and animals, and several geographic locations have used the word. In 1925, the Matthes Coal and Construction Company was marketing “Niggerhead Coal” as more efficient and a better buy than soft coal. The colloquial names for echinacea (coneflower) are “Kansas niggerhead” and “Wild niggerhead.” The cotton-top cactus (Echinocactus polycephalus) is a round, cabbage-size…