Introduction

Nigger

Negro-Black-African American-Colored

Negroid-Caucasian-White 

Note:  For all systematic purposes the words Black, African American, Negroid, Negro and Colored will be used to describe people and Black/White issues in this book.  The word “Nigger” is used to stress a derogatory title--operative to the “Great American Nigger Designation.”  It must also be noted that 40 years ago all people of the world who were brown in color were referred to as “Colored.”  Currently the “Colored Races” have been reclassified as Caucasian to stop “Caucasian Elimination Eradication.” Read between the lines and translate the code words.

Black Americans still have a problem when referring to themselves as African American, Black, Negro and Negroid but do not hesitate to call one another “Nigger.”  The Continent of Africa carries negative undertones assigned by European Colonialists.  The Tarzan Movies of the 1950’s helped to reinforce negativism of Africa and African people in the US as children watched the movies on Saturday afternoons.  African Americans will tell you in a minute that they aren’t Africans. “My skin is not Black----So don’t refer to me as Black, but “You’re my Nigger!!!”  Multiracial is becoming more widely used among Black Americans who want to downplay Negroid ancestry. 

“Your heritage is my slavery,” written by Bernice P. Jackson presents a decoding illustration for the terms, “states rights” and code words.  The term “states rights” is no more than a code word for White supremacy.  States had the right to impose segregation during the 1950’s and 1960’s just as South Carolina has the right as a state to use the Confederate Flag as the state flag.  The justification:  the flag is a way of honoring South Carolina’s heritage (Michigan Chronicle 2-16, Feb, 2000).  Whites have used benign code words on the surface. Since Blacks are survivors of a dichotomy world, we have always been able to “read between the lines.”  Average Americans fail to see the cancer of the codes.  Nigger is a code word.  “Colored Race” is a code word that has been changed to “Caucasian” by physical anthropologists who see their race disappearing.  Multiracial is a relatively new code word.                

The attitude of the American Aboriginal is very impressive.  Their inference to the code words--”full blood,” “half blood”--What’s the difference?  The title Negroid will be used in this book because it denotes the classical distinction between the three main racial categories--Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid. 

The code word Neger (Nigger) was found earlier in Northern England in 1587, and Negre in Middle French (early 1600s). Both Neger and Negre come from Negro, Spanish and Portuguese for the color black, which comes from the Latin Niger, also meaning the color black.

The following definitions of code words for blackness come from Alison Hamilton who wrote “Nigger Please!” Recent scholarship by Martin Bernal (Black Athena, Rutgers University Press, 1991), suggests that the source of niger is the "beautiful blackness" of the Nigretai or Nigretes, nomadic tribes in Libya before 800 BC. Their name, Bernal States, “came from the Semitic root <(n)gr (water to flow into sand) which was the origin of the toponymns Gar, Ger, Nagar and Niger, notably the River Niger, which unaccountably flowed east away from the Atlantic, apparently into the desert." Thus, the Latin niger may indeed be connected to the Niger River and to the later Negro.

The word Negro fell out of use as a harmless adjective and slowly but steadily became a negative, degrading designation for Africans, replacing the term “Moor.” Webster tells its readers that Moors are Caucasian in its continuing effort to disguise the Negroid ancestry of Spanish, Italian, and some Irish.  Moor is a code word.  The title “Negro” was first used in relation to African people which traces back to approximately 1443, when Portuguese explorers went down the coast of Africa, past the Senegal River to Guinea, where they began trafficking African people as slaves. By 1555 (shortly after the first slaves were brought to London), Negro was adopted by the English as their term for Africans and other people of color.  Negro became a code word.

In the late 1950’s, Richard B. Moore, author and founder of the Frederick Douglass Book Center in Harlem, formed the Committee to present the Truth About the Name "Negro." The Committee developed a resolution to adopt the terms African and Afro-American, and they petitioned the press to drop the usage of Negro.  Moore published his book, The Name "Negro:" Its Origin and Evil Use in 1960. (Republished in 1992 by UBUS Communication Systems, Inc.)

Negro, Black, nigger, and negress were unacceptable, Moore expounded, because the Europeans used the labels denoting savagery, immorality, and distinct inferiority and used the words to designate Africans. According to Moore, Europeans also reserved the word “black” as a label for identifying Africans. The Black Power movement, beginning with Stokely Carmichael in 1966, successfully rallied for Black as the preferred term of identity.  James Brown’s Say It Loud--I’m Black, and I’m Proud were also instrumental in the “Black Pride Movement.”  Some would argue that the designation of Black still represents a European-based (negative) construct.

Late in the last Millennium the Merriam-Webster Dictionary staff of lexicographers decided that the entry of “Nigger” in its dictionary would be changed after protests from the NAACP.  Their staff decided that the word Nigger would no longer be synonymous with African-Americans.  The decision....It is duly noted that “nigger” is a racial slur and not what African-Americans themselves are.  Subsequent definitions included: "a member of any dark skinned race" and "a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons."  

However, the Merriam-Webster Staff of “experienced and professional lexicographers” continue to defend their prior definition saying the practice has been to list what was concluded to be the oldest definition of a word--instead of the most commonly accepted definition--first in their dictionary. The primary entry was changed to--"a slang term used primarily as a derogatory and racially demeaning reference to a Black person."  

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary constitutes the core of the English language.  The dictionary has been publishing the derogatory title “Nigger”--synonymous with Negroid Race--for over 150 years.   Take for instance the title “White Race.” The White Race was named 'Caucasian' by its inventor Johann Blumenbach around 1776 because he thought the Chechens were the 'most beautiful' race of people on Earth.  Blumenbach has been credited as the first thinker to arrange 'races' in a hierarchy of superior/inferior groups.

The dictionary will not change the primary definition of “Caucasian” to the following…….at one time Caucasian meant only those people who originated from Europe near the Caucasus Mountains but now includes the “Colored” Races that physical anthropologists have catalogued as Caucasian to stop White eradication from the face of the Earth.  

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines White as.... free from spot or blemish; pure; innocent.  The definition proclaims the White man as innocent, pure and truthful.  Who do you believe?  Caucasian means beautiful!!!  Black means Nigger!!!  Nigger has been synonymous with the Negroid Race for the past 150 years.   

Everyone was informed that a landmark decision was made in April 2004 with the people at Merriam-Webster Dictionary. They have recognized the error of their ways.

So, beginning with the next edition, the word nigger will no longer be synonymous with African-Americans. It shall be duly noted that it's a racial slur and not what African-Americans themselves.