antedate for "nigger" = exploited person, UK 1941 (OED 1963)

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

 “Since there are no niggers here, they had to create niggers. The poor are the niggers in this country." Wyndham Lewis in The Vulgar Streak, 1941.

The OED defines this sense as "6. Esp. U.S. A person who is socially, politically, or economically disadvantaged or exploited; a victim of prejudice likened to that endured by African Americans," and gives as the earliest cite a 1963 sentence from Hunter Thompson.

Geoff

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