Flap over the word "niggardly?"

[nemo137]

i remember hearing this story a few years ago and was wondering if anyone could tell me where a college administrator got fired/ nearly fired/ not fired but pissed off some peope for using the word niggardly, which some people to be close to a racial slur? any information would be appreciated.

[Bluebear]

1. Voila

http://www.adversity.net/special/niggardly.htm

[rooboy]

2. Link

http://www.adversity.net/special/niggardly.htm

[ironflange]

37. You're quick

But not quite quick enough.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. It's a RW web site, but ...

... they got the story correct.

Adversity.net collects atrocity stories for angry white guys.

--bkl

[progdonkey]

4. re-hired

I may be wrong, but I remember reading that the aide got his job back once the story became public and the DC mayor's office was provided with dictionaries. My English teacher my senior year once used "niggardly," and it provoked gasps in the class; of course she was using it correctly, and once the class realized she wasn't saying what they thought she was saying, everything was cool (luckily, this was about five months after the DC story occured, so I was able to back her up). It's amazing what ignorance can produce, though.

Edit: grammar mistake

[outinforce]

48. Do You Happen To Know Of Any Websites.......

"Adversity.net collects atrocity stories for angry white guys"

Do you happen to know of any websites that collect atrocity stories for angry black folks? angry females? angry gays?

[nemo137]

5. thanks guys

i'm using it in a paper as an example of word and semantic change.

[QC]

6. The two words have no etymological connection, though,

so it's not really a matter of word change. Niggard comes from a Scandinavian root by way of Middle English, while nigger has Latin origins.

Having said that, I would never use the words niggard or niggardly in public--not worth the potential trouble. There are plenty of good alternatives.

[Sapphocrat]

7. Sad, isn't it...

...as "niggardly" is a perfectly good word, that has nothing to do with you-know-what. It used to be part of my own lexicon -- until I realized there are too many illiterates out there who would think I was using a derivative of the N-word.

Ditto anything even close -- I backspaced over the word "niggling" in a post the other day, for the same reason.

You're right -- there are plenty of good alternatives. It just makes me wonder what other perfectly innocent words will be on the chopping block in a few years, due to such misunderstanding.

[QC]

8. Well, I remember reading a few years back about a UC-Davis

administrator who sent out a memo requesting that faculty not use the phrases "a nip in the air" and "a chink in his armor," lest they be mistaken for ethnic slurs.

[Sapphocrat]

10. The next sound you hear...

...will be my forehead banging repeatedly against the monitor.

That's astounding. But I believe it!

[Yupster]

15. And saying someone got "gyped"

in a deal is no longer acceptable either.

[Orangepeel]

22. well that really is an ethnic slur (n/t)

[markses]

25. Yeah! Apparently you can't say that somebody "Jewed you down"

in a negotiation either. Damn PC Nazis! :eyes:

[AngryAmish]

35. Or Tinker's Dam.

[Canuckistanian]

44. We used that expression all the time when we were kids

We thought it was a valid word. Of course, we had no idea that it referred to gypsies and we never saw any anyways.

My parents still used the word "jewed" with the same meaning until about the '70's. I always thought THAT was wrong.

[Richardo]

16. My brother (an HR guy) got in trouble for "it's a jungle out there"

Someone who apparently never heard the phrase before thought it was racist. :eyes:

Says more about the mentality of the complaintant than my brother, who used it to mean exactly what it DOES mean: "It's a tough environment out there."

[JayS]

38. We had an airline sued here after the flight attendant made...

...a crack involving eeinie, meenie, miny, moe.

[BevHarris]

9. And then there's the Niger River...

and of course, we should eliminate the Spanish word for the color black (negro).

Ah, but we love our illiteracy so much that we elected one for president. (An illiterate, that is. Not a niggling person, to be sure, as he brags that he doesn't even self-examine, much less pick at details.)

Bev

[Sapphocrat]

11. I think somebody had better warn...

...Chuck Negron!

[Dogmudgeon]

12. Remember RW factotum Niger Innes?

Well, the MSNBC spell checker fixed his name. You can guess what it was "fixed" as.

--bkl

[booksenkatz]

13. Perhaps other birdwatchers can confirm this

One of the top brands for bird seed has recently changed its label for niger seed. It now says 'NYJER' in great big print on the bag! How sad that we have to spell things funnetikly in order to be understood these days.

[redqueen]

29. God please give us another Lenny Bruce

PLEASE!

[nemo137]

42. comes from a word for "ashes" actually

i'm using it as an example of social pressures changing language, not semantic drift (i used the word "silly" for that one."

[mike1963]

31. One morning in 1959 I walked into my senior English class and saw SHIT

and PISS written on the blackboard (which was green.)

Everyone was horrified and wondering who would have had the temerity to scribe such profanity. Mr. Guinn, our teacher walked into the room, glanced at the board and didn't say anything for what seemed an eternity. Finally, he grinned and said "I suppose you're wondering who wrote those words...I did."

This somewhat stunning revelation was followed by a discussion of how the words were not considered 'obscene' in the past, but had managed to evolve and become so. (You probably know that the toilet was invented by a man named Crapper.) :D

Mr. Guinn was as you probably can discern, a most unusual teacher for those days. ;-)

[Karenina]

14. Schwarzennegger???

Black WHAT??? :wow: ;-)

I remember that flap, my mother went postal with a dictionary.

[Gregorian]

17. As an aside- The only niggers I've ever met are WHITE

Funny how times change. I live in a neighborhood of white niggers and yellow ribbons.

[AngryAmish]

36. Do you live near Senator Byrd?

[Gregorian]

47. Ok, that was stupid of me

edit- As I was working, I realized that in my exaggeration, I made an erroneous generalization. As much as I'm pissed off at the white race (whatever that is), for having done most of the world's bad deeds, I still must not lump them together. For after all, it is so many of the good people here, and in the rest of the world, who are white, and not like those who anger me so much. I'm sorry I did that. I seem to have so much more empathy for nonwhites. It's hard to stay calm through all of this aggression.




I have absolutely no racism in me. I happen to live in a neighborhood of horse riding, truck parading, yellow ribbon flying, assholes. I don't think they give five minutes of thought to what we are doing to the world with this aggression. And as I sit and watch them do through their daily girations, I felt that they were worthless humans. Then I realized that they were actually worse than worthless. That's when the term "white nigger" came to mind. I'm white, but I really don't like whites, after all the damage they've done to the world. Hah, that makes me a racist doesn't it? Funny how I don't like my own race. Oh well. To me nigger is just a word. The hate I have for these clowns who don't care about anyone but themselves, is what drives vocabulary.

[Bandit]

18. I was under the impression that the word Nigger was just a shortened

version of Negro. Well shortened is not exactly correct but the result of a southern drawl. First it was Nigras and finally ended up as nigger. Is the word Negro as offensive? They are all descriptive of the Black man and I never quite understood how one got to be so opffensive and the other not at all. I grew up in Juneau Alaska where there was two black families and I never experience the racial tensions and overtones that permeate the lower forty-eight. I don't want to seem insensitive here and I never use any terminology that I'm told is offensive unless it is like this post. In the sixties I often heard the term Spade used to describe a black person. I never try to distinguish by color at all when I talk about anyone. I don't feel there is any point in doing so. It almost never adds to the conversation and usually will just end up insulting someone. I am just curious though as to the origination of the insult. I find "Boy" to be even more insulting for the black man as it is designed to be insulting and belittling.

[trof]

21. Growing up in the 40s' and 50s' south...

In Birmingham, Alabama, no less.

To call a Negro black, as in "black boy" was an insult.
Granny said "Nigras". Our family wasn't exactly a hotbed of liberalism, but "nigger" was a no-no. I think because that's the way the "lower" (uneducated) white classes talked, more than a concern for the feelings of black people.

I don't remember the term "nigger" particularly being a slur back then. That came later.

I remember an affluent, upper class(?) family we were friends with. They had a maid, cook, and butler/chauffer; all black of course. Out of their earshot they were referred to as "the darkies". Sort of a humorous (to them) plantation-paternalistic term.

Yeah, I thought the "niggardly" thing was just dumb.

[TreasonousBastard]

40. I remember being slightly shocked at "darkies" when...

I first heard it from my grandmother in rural Maryland. It did seem paternalistic and insulting, but there was some bizarre cultural thing going on.

Those grandparents just happened to be fighting against discrimination all the way back in the 20's. They considered the enormous divides between black and white back then to be disgraceful, and decidedly un-Christian. Even tried to integrate their own church, to the shock and awe of their neighbors. Their ancestors supported the North in that unpleasantness, largely due to their disgust with slavery, and that attitude stayed in the family.

But, considering that huge divide, you ended up having to call them something, and "darkies" seemed to be the least offensive term at the time.

[Az]

19. Wikipedia has the full story here and some good definitions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger_(word)

[trof]

20. bastard file

In grammar school we had a shop teacher who liked to use the term just to see our little jaws drop.

[JayS]

23. I always felt sorry for the little bastard. :) n/t

n/t

[Xithras]

24. A drama teacher in my HS...

...got in trouble when he introduced his students to a prop for an upcoming play...the Bastard Sword. Apparently someone reported him to the principle and he was forced to refer to them as Hand And A Half Swords.

My wife got into a similar argument at an SCA meetup once when some oglers walked up and berated her after hearing her toss me my own bastard sword. She tried to explain to them that it was the proper name for the sword, but the lady just went on and one about her "foul language ruining this wholesome family event". Of course, this "wholesome Christian" finished up by calling my wife a 'stupid dyke'.

I had her ejected for that one :)

[mike1963]

32. Haha...reminds me of an old machine shop joke:

"could you hand me that file over there?"

"do you want the flat bastard?"

"naw, give me that round son of a bitch"

...

[slackmaster]

26. What are you, some kind of pedagogue trying to edumacate us?

:evilgrin:

[nemo137]

54. don't get me started

this is my second all nighter working on this thing, and if you're not careful, you'll end up knowing more about semantic drift than any sane person should.

[DrWeird]

27. Kind of depends on the context, really.

I mean who still uses the word 'niggardly' in regular conversation? Not that I'm saying this is what happened, but I can easily see somebody using that word to talk specifically about a black employee with an emphasis on 'niggar'. Racists like to think they're clever with words.

[slackmaster]

28. One of my grandmothers used it often to describe deep poverty

e.g. "When we were kids we lived on a small farm. We didn't have much of anything. We were niggardly poor."

The first time I heard it I had to look it up in the dictionary.

[Alpha Wolf]

30. I use it regularly...

when I'm referring to a person or entity that has a bitter avarice toward spending money.

[DrWeird]

33. You use "avarice" a lot too?

How about "hullabuloo", "rapscallion", and "the bee's knees"?

[Emboldened Chimp]

43. Rapscallion is a GREAT word!

As are rascal, scamp, rogue and ne'er-do-well!

[Hammie]

45. "Wrong"

The meaning of the word is specific and well defined and has no racial connotation whatsoever. It is the kind of word that people with a "vocabulary" would reasonably be expected to know and use in conversation on occasion. It is kind of like the word "dolt" in that respect.

[noiretextatique]

49. still depends on the context

as dr. weird mentions, some racists think they are clever. not saying that was the issue in this case...this seems to be a case of the mayor trying to score political points by firing the aide.

[Hammie]

50. What can I say

except that what this board really needs is a smiley that depicts a head banging endlessly against a brick wall.

[noiretextatique]

51. ever had that experience of a surprised face seeing you in person?

thinking you were white on the phone, but seeing you are black when meeting? it's pretty funny what people say. i've also had the experience of people (like professors) using various forms of code language to convey something that they couldn't just come right out and say...at least not anymore.

is it completely inconceivable to you that someone might use the a word that has one meaning in a feeble attempt to suggest some other meaning?

again...in the case in question, that doesn't seem to be the case, per the article i read. it seems the black mayor (who was unpopular with black constituents) created a mountain out of a molehill in order to score political points by firing the white aide.

[Hammie]

52. No

...is it completely inconceivable to you that someone might use the a word that has one meaning in a feeble attempt to suggest some other meaning?



Do you mean like "I could care less" when, in fact, it should be "I couldn't care less"?

[noiretextatique]

53. bang your head then

i could care less. and if you don't care...why respond in the first place?

[DrWeird]

55. Just do a search.

I remember this guy's name quite well.

[noiretextatique]

57. no need to

if you know what i mean, doc. "liberals" :eyes: indeed.

[noiretextatique]

46. right, dr.weird: it's not like america has always been a bastion

of tolerance or that racial epithets haven't been a part of the "way of life" for some. tends to make people a little paranoid.
some people respond negatively to words like "boy," "gal," and (as we have seen here) "bitch."
certainly some people take things too far, and are too sensitive. but let's not pretend there is no reason at all for that.

[truthspeaker]

34. I told my latina cleaning lady the floor looked spic & span

She's suing me now.

(j/k)

[ironflange]

39. This may just be a good story

But I read once long ago that the manufacturer got a letter of complaint about Spic & Span. The writer suggested that a less offensive name would be Hispanic American & Span or Puerto Rican & Span. heh

[TreasonousBastard]

41. Not quite the same thing, but...

A bunch of us were sitting round in a local diner one night talking about Central America, and one of the guys mentioned what sounded like "Niggeragua." Didn't mean that, of course, just kind of came out that way because he often slurred words of many syllables.

Well, a black waitress happened to be within earshot, and that poor slob never knew what hit him.

"WudIsay? WudIsay?"

[Moloch]

56. It was someone working in the District Of Columbia govt

it was last year I believe. Absolutely ridiculous how the illiterate and the ignorant get all worked up about this when there are real problems to worry about.