Nigger vs. Colored, et al.

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/2/2011 11:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I thought all disciplines were like that.
>
>But back to the point.  What I can tell you from personal investigation is
>that the large number of eighteenth-century escaped-slave notices reprinted
>in the 4 vols. of Lathan A. Windley's _Runaway Slave Advertisements_ _all_
>use the word "negro" and eschew "nigger."
>
>Slave-trade advertisements similarly use "negro" - I'm tempted to say
>exclusively.

Jon, in the vast majority of, not exclusively in, 18th century
newspaper advertisements and articles, whether for runaways, sales,
give-aways (of children or infants), crimes, or escapes from jail,
"Negro" was capitalized.  Whether this was because all nouns were
capitalized (generally, if not always) or because "Negro" was thought
of as a proper noun I'm not sure we can tell -- although one hint may
be that it was not often italicized, as names of persons and places
generally were.

I do agree that "Negro" was used exclusively. Just a couple of days
ago I did some searching in Early American Newspapers and Google
Books.  Certainly there are false positives, false negatives,
duplicates, etc., and I did not attempt to separate adjectival
uses.  Nor did my searches distinguish capitalization.  But the
numbers are suggestive.  I searched both all dates and before Jan. 1,
1800.  (Probably a little hard to comprehend in the form below, but I
don't know how well plain text will preserve a tabular format.)

Negro  --   EAN all dates: 219,000; <1800: 93,500.  GB all dates: 6 x
10**6;  <1800:  76,000.

nigger -- EAN all dates: 674; <1800: 20 -- of which *zero* are
genuine (not false positives).  GB -- I didn't count.
      Probably a number of false positives.  I looked at the earliest
instances quickly, and the first genuine hit I noticed  was 1810, in
an a piece the reader will presume is a letter written by a Negro,
and in dialect.  (I didn't look for anything later.)

niger -- EAN all dates:  4400;  <1800:  970.  GB -- I didn't count.
      Probably a number of false positives.  I looked at the earliest
instances quickly, and the first genuine hit I noticed, curiously,
was in the 1760s, the "HMS Niger" (in battle).  "Niger" occurs
earlier (OED s.v. "nigger" says 1574, but also says "nigger" does not
occur with hostile intent until 1775), but perhaps not in (American)
newspapers.

African American --  EAN all dates:  36; <1800:  5 -- of which *zero*
are genuine.  GB all dates: 2.3 x 10**6;  <1800: 42.
      Probably many false positives.  One genuine instance (perhaps
the earliest) is 1822 Sep 6, Enquirer.

African [NOT eliminating "African American"] -- EAN all dates:
32,000;  <1800:  6800.  GB all dates:  1.0 x 10**7;  <1800:  36,400.

Joel

>In fact, well into the 19th C., the "n-word" appears almost exclusively in
>colloquial contexts. My feeling is that the Abolition debate tended to bring
>out more heated language in the South.
>
>So whatever even slave-holding whites may have been *saying* in the 18th and
>early 19th C., they seem to have regarded as the n-word as too crude or
>low-class for formal use.
>
>This may have contributed to the misapprehension that "nigger" is simply
>a contemptuous "mispronunciation" of "Negro."  See HDAS.
>
>JL
>
>On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC,
>71700 <lynne.hunter at navy.mil> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Hunter, Lynne R CIV SPAWARSYSCEN-PACIFIC, 71700"
> >              <lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL>
> > Subject:      Nigger vs. Colored, et al.
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > `A propos of "Negro/Negro, black/Black," can anybody tell me when
> > "nigger" began to be avoided in polite company in various parts of the
> > US (or the British Isles)? Any info about the circumstances under which
> > that term came to be replaced by "colored" or "negro"?
> >
> > Droll (I thought) observation from a student's paper: "...linguistics:
> > the discipline that never apologizes for itself."
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Lynne Hunter

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