The Dreaded "n-word"

 Some people get all worked up about the "n-word". It is that dread that gave rise to "n-word" as an ostensibly acceptable place holder for "nigger". This is childishness of the lowest order, but that is orthogonal to my purpose here.

Prior to more recent times, "nigger" was not as a rule a pejorative term. It derived from "negro", which itself derives from the Spanish or Portuguese, itself derived from the Latin "nigrum" for "black". People, as a general rule, tend to get lazy with their word pronunciations. For example, in Japanese "wakarimasu" (I understand} is pronounced "wakariMAS". The 'u' is dropped.

Italian does the same thing: in the film "The Godfather II", for example, we see Vito's mother refer to don Ciccio (formally pronounced "chee-chee-o" as "don cheech", the "io" dropped in common pronunciation.

And then there are the French who neglect to pronounce 3/4 of all the letters in nearly every word of their own language.

Even in English it happens, the typical New York City native dropping certain 'r's, for example, such as in "New Yawk".

And so it was with "negro". If you sit quietly and say the word to yourself, then say "nigger", you will almost certainly discover that nigger is easier to say. "Negro" requires more muscular effort than does "nigger". And of course there is the even lazier version of "nigger", "nigga" that arose precisely because the latter is even easier on the tongue than the former.

This ain't rocket surgery. It's just basic, common human habit.

So back in the prewar days when farmer James's barn caught fire and he'd ask his neighbor Jedidiah to get some of his niggers to help put out the blaze, he wasn't trying to insult the black slaves. He was using a term that was semantically identical to negro to refer to people of black African genetic lineage, and nothing more. It wasn't necessarily an expression of contempt or anything that could be even remotely taken as negative in its nature. It was just people doing what people do to this day: taking a physical shortcut for the sake of ease.

You are then well behooved to ask yourself why an innocent derivation, born of a common and nearly universal human habit, has become tacitly associated with some evil that must be extinguished. Ask yourself who benefits by this and what possible purpose might such navigation serve, being careful not to fall for the standard explanations, because they do not stand up to even the most cursory examination. If you do a little cogitation on the matter, considering the questions while bearing in mind the demonstrated habits of people in power or who wish to gain power of some political form, methinks the answers, or at least some well founded suspicions, may converge on a small set of candidates that vary significantly from those of the official stories that are peddled in every corner to child and adult alike. Be well, take no wooden nickels, question everything - including my vaunted self - and as always, please accept my best wishes.