By now we are all probably aware of the media flash-mob that has erupted over presidential candidate Rick Perry’s badly named hunting ranch leased plot near Haskell, Texas. There’s quite a story in the New York Times about it here.
Seeing the word used today, it reminded me of an odd experience in west Texas earlier this year where I heard the term used before. I had forgotten all about it until today. I hadn’t intended to write a story on this at all, but curiosity about that event led me down an interesting set of rabbit holes, so I thought I’d share what I learned about this ugly and offensive term and how surprising the wide and varied use of it is.
In the spring, I was at a conference/tradeshow in Oklahoma and Dallas where I showed some of our weather equipment. Reader may recall I blogged about the Japan earthquake and Tsunami while in a hotel room in Oklahoma City. The next week I was in Dallas. Shortly after the conference closed, I had the misfortune of driving along a stretch of lonely highway 82 between Dallas and Lubbock. I had to go through Lubbock because I needed to go to Muleshoe, TX, where there was an unsurveyed USHCN station I wanted to add to the surfacestations.org station database, and Muleshoe (only to discover later that Juan Slayton had added it already) was so that had to be my route so I could connect to Highway 388 which goes NW from Lubbock to Muleshoe, and then on to Fort Sumner NM where I wanted to verify a Google street view on an MMTS. My GPS, as GPS’s sometimes do had me going on some backroads, including Munday, TX which I thought had an odd name and I got turned around for a bit and found myself headed south on 277 to Haskell. Got that solved and headed west on 222 to connect to 82.
I found myself in a pickle when I reached Guthrie, TX because I was getting low on gas, and I hadn’t seen any gas stations. From the 82 bypass around Guthrie I spotted what looked to be a gas station, so I double back, took the exit and went into town. It was a gas station alright, long since closed and there was nothing else in town. I was afraid I’d find myself stranded in Guthrie. I was struck by the fact that I was in the middle of one of the biggest oil producing states, and there was not a drop of gasoline to be found. There was no cell service that would support web browsing on my phone either, so I couldn’t search for one.
So I drove around just a bit in Guthrie, until I spotted somebody I could ask. It was like a ghost town, but I finally found someone (actually they found me because parked and waited and he rode by on a bike) and I flagged the guy down and asked where I might find some gas. He thought a moment and said “There’s no gas here, nearest is either Ralls or Crosbyton”. I asked where those towns were and he said: “on 82 (pointing west) out past the niggerheads, and then past Dickens”. I said “What? Niggerhead? Is that a town? and he looked at me like I was from another planet (I didn’t tell him I was from California) and he said “no that’s the hills, you’ll see em, and then ya go through Dickens, and Crosbyton, and then Ralls. One of ‘em should have gas.”
I did find gas in Crosbyton, after driving west on 82 through the hills the man described which you can see here in Google maps.
The term “niggerheads” was puzzling and odd, but I figured it was just some local colloquialism, and I didn’t give it another thought…until today.
So after being bombarded with all the news stories about how offensive this term is, and noting that some of the same people doing reporting lambasting Perry over the name of a ranch called “niggerhead” have absolutely no trouble at all calling people like me and the readers of WUWT “deniers” (Think Progress, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, among others) which is also an ugly and offensive term due to the connection to “holocaust deniers”.
So, I thought I’d see what I could find on it. I figured if it was some sort of local colloquial term when I heard it in Texas last spring, I’d find it in older books and maps.
So in my first Google search, amongst all the news stories about Perry, I found my first clue as to why I heard the term, in Wikipedia:
The term was once widely used for all sorts of things, including products such as soap and chewing tobacco, but most often for geographic features such as hills and rocks.[citation needed] In the U.S., more than hundred “Niggerheads” and other place names now considered racially offensive were changed in 1962 by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, but many local names remained unchanged.[1]
So that explained why the fellow I asked directions from used the term for the hills I’d drive through. The NYT article I cited above also mentions this.
I can understand how it is offensive, and I can certainly see removing it. But I think removing it is going to be a much bigger job than the bloodhounds in the mainstream media thinks. Just look at all the references to the word in science and engineering and geography:
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Nigger Head, an island in North Queensland, Australia
United States. Bureau of Fisheries – 1921 – Free Google eBook – Read
NIGGERHEAD GROUP. The shells of the niggerhead group distinguish themselves from all others of the Quadrula class by combining a … In buying mussels for button manufacture the price is often based upon the percentage of niggerheads.
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen – 1911 – Free Google eBook – Read
One chamber casting (acting as a nigger head), is bolted centrally to the dry pipe in such a manner as to have the fingers … As the throttle is opened, steam is admitted through the dry pipe to the header which acts as a nigger head.
The vegetation of New Zealand – Page 157
books.google.com Leonard Cockayne – 1921 – 456 pages – Free Google eBook – Read
3- Niggerhead (Carex secta)-association. Here shock-headed masses of C. secta are dominant raised above the water on … Niggerhead -swamp contains many of the ordinary swamp-plants and many transitions occur between it and Phormium-
License my roving hands: poems and stories – Page 19
books.google.comJuanita Tobin – 2000 – 57 pages – Preview
NIGGERHEAD ROAD The squeaky, old doors have closed forever on a school, a drug store and train station with a telegraph office where matrimonial ads and baseball games were transmitted as well as business on the stock exchange and a …
International Association of Bridge, Structural, and Ornamental Iron Workers – 1905 – Free Google eBook – Read
THE MAN ON THE NIGGER HEAD. His legs are poor, he can’t go aloft, In the “bull” gang he is dead; But should the boss throw a line across He is first to the ” nigger head.” He keeps the line coiled neat and trim, But I have often heard it…
In the Alaskan wilderness – Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?id=BHUtAAAAYAAJ…George Byron Gordon – 1917 – Alaska – 247 pages
This is what is called nigger- head and muskeg in the language of the North. … on any map of Alaska), and prepared to do all the portaging ourselves. …
Highway to Alaska
books.google.com Herbert Charles Lanks – 1944 – 200 pages – Snippet view
16 Niggerhead and Horse Camp Lakes The next day I decided to explore ahead on foot, for there was no one in camp who seemed to know the condition of the road. They said that the last vehicle had got through way back in April, …
The Pennsylvania barn: its origin, evolution, and distribution in … – Page 263
books.google.com Robert F. Ensminger – 2003 – 348 pages – Preview
The development of the nigger head in central Pennsylvania was examined under ” Tying Joints and Bent Raisings” (see … The emergence of the nigger head may also result from a simplification of the double tie beam, which is commonly …
Journal of conchology: Volume 11 – Page 214
books.google.com Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland – 1906 – Free Google eBook – Read
Moreover the growth of the shells is very slow, the time required for a “nigger- head” to reach a size of three … The standard is the “niggerhead.” In 1897 the market value of this species in Muscatine ranged from 40 to 62 cents per …
The mineral resources of New South Wales – Page 402
books.google.com Geological Survey of New South Wales, Edward Fisher Pittman – 1901 – 487 pages – Free Google eBook – Read
There is another peculiar form common on the field, known as a nigger head. These nigger heads are usually oval or spherical masses of more or less opal- impregnated, fine grained silica ; they are of all sizes from 1 lb. to 1 cwt.,
California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current … – Page 258
books.google.com Erwin G. Gudde, William Bright – 2004 – 460 pages – Preview
and Niggerhead Mountain [Los Angeles Co. ] (which probably reflect the now obsolete term “niggerhead” in the sense of … Note that the term “Niggerhead” in place names may refer not to the head of a Negro, but rather to a flanged drum …
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So clearly, the offensive term is well established in literature and placenames. It will take time and effort to remove it.
Remember the photo at the top of this story? Guess what the name of it was up until about a year ago.
Even politically correct California suffered (until recently) from a place called “Niggerhead Mountain” of which you can get an interactive map of right here at this link: http://californiamaps.org/place.php?county=Los+Angeles&feature=Niggerhead+Mountain
And while it still shows up in map databases, it too has recently been renamed:
History professor works to rename mountain in Los Angeles
Thanks to the work of a Moorpark College history professor, a Southern California mountain will be renamed to honor the man who first settled in the area and erase the original racial slur.
Good for him, it is the right thing to do. But it just goes to demonstrate that the current inhabitants of a place often get stuck with unfortunate names of the past, and that doesn’t necessarily make somebody who lives by that mountain in Los Angeles county a racist.
It also doesn’t make the people of Queensland, Australia, who have an island named “niggerhead”, racist. Wikipedia says:
Nigger Head is a small island in the Northern part of Shelburne Bay in far north Queensland, Australia about 30km North of Cape Grenville, Cape York Peninsula in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Queensland, Australia.[1] It is so named because it is an isolated coral outcrop; such outcrops were previously known as Niggerheads by British sailors.
And here it is, currently in the Australian Government Geoscience page:
I wonder if any Australian political candidates ever go fishing or diving near that island? Wow, wouldn’t that be a bombshell?
So clearly, with all the citations of “niggerhead” I found in books, maps, placenames, and professional journals, there’s a lot of work to do to erase the ugly and insensitive term. There’s also a lot of places where the term is used and there’s no outrage (yet).
In light of this, I think we all should cut Rick Perry some slack, because the one presidential candidate who would be the most offended by the term, Herman Cain, isn’t. From CBS News:
Cain said he is “done with that issue,” making the following comment in response to reporters’ questions: “Was I satisfied with Governor Perry’s explanation about the name of the ranch where he went hunting? And I said, ‘Yes I am. Next question.”
I suspect Perry told him some of the same things I learned about placenames and geography.
Now if we can just get those same reporters in the MSM to stop labeling skeptics with another ugly and offensive term “deniers” like Andy Revkin’s recent NYT story where he even goes so far as to promote a map, “A Map of Organized Climate Change Denial“, I and many others will feel far less offended.
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Note to commenters and moderators – I will NOT tolerate anything offensive related to this story in comments. All such responses will be deleted. – Anthony
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One wonders how many newly schooled geologists know the old school name for ‘glacial erratic’.
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ferd berple says:
October 3, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Years ago I worked with an engineering crew building logging roads on the west coast of Canada. ….
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As a Timber Cruiser on the Wet Coast of BC in the late 70’s I heard the offending term used as Fred describes, with the proviso that they were trying to stop it’s use. The evolution of language, I guess.
Has anyone read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn?? It would make PC heads explode.
In PC America, even perfectly legitimate words are forbidden. And naturally, heads have already exploded over this.
I am no fan of rap music although I think it’s quaint that it’s pronounced using a silent C. A year or so back I was using a walking path on a lake near to my home when I passed an athletic young black woman was going through a series of stretching excercises in the parking lot, car door open, music playing loud.
Couldn’t help but hear the lyrics which were suggesting that young black women like her were n*iggers and wh*res. She appeared to have no issue with this and gave me a wide eyed disgusted look when I politely asked her to turn it down a bit. It was a peaceful place where people go to relax and even ignoring the lyrics the “music” itself was offensive enough to the ears. If I recorded a song like that I’d rightly have the book thrown at me.
There are hundreds of words in many languages (not just English) which have more than a single usage or meaning. Chink is another (sound, narrow opening, person of oriental descent). Bastard is another (file, or person). And so on. Are we to purge all languages of all terms that could possibly offend anyone? I think not.
Metaphysics occasionally empowers words in a way completely alien to science. I mean; a word will take on so much connotation and emotive power that it not longer functions nominally, or merely nominally. YHWH is the most powerful example: unwritten & unspoken by the Jews. The ancient and forgotten crimes of blasphemy. The word that must never be spoken. Spells, curses, maledictions and blessings. Language is so arbitrary and uncontrolled. Perfectly good verbs like “gay” and “retard” morph into nouns of opprobrium. My point is the n-word’s descent into “a word that must not be spoken” is not a new or novel phenomenon. It’s just happening in our day and it does say something about our touchy race relations. BTW, fifty years ago anybody digging through glacial stone/till in the upper mid-west, pipe-liners, utility contractors, farmers, miners, whomever, called the bigger rocks niggerheads.
It is interesting that the media lied to connect the name to the Perry family and then persisted in calling it racially charged.
The question it raises is how many stories we see day to day are simply deliberate distortions of the the facts, designed to manipulate the public square?
The Nigger of the Narcissus a Tale of the Forecastle Joseph Conrad 1897. For another one.
Maybe Niger should change it’s name also.
When I was a kid we use to call a specific type of nut (Brazil nut I think) a “nigger toe”.
Wing commander Guy Gibson had a black labrador dog, called Nigger, predictably enough.
The original movie version of The Dam Busters featured three scenes with Nigger, who assumed the role of the “so cute”, and “so sad” device in the film.
I learned the movie has been remade recently, so I was curious if Nigger would be brushed from history. Apparently, the “so cute” “so sad” device works so well with a charming dog, there is still a black labrador featured. He has been “cunningly” renamed to Digger. Given the context of the time, and perhaps even now, calling your dog Digger might not have amused your Australian allies.
Homo Sapiens Post-Modernis is a peculiar species, happy to drown in obscenity and violence, but woe betide the UnPC.
And for R de Haan, who asked, yes indeed, at least here in PC South Africa, “whitewash” is now taboo.
Great story! You are a natural story teller.
Words are not, in of themselves, offensive. and Nobody has the right NOT to be offended.
Perry, whom I don’t like, should not be demagoged on this.
It is a faked story, designed to stir-up insincere people about trial things.
trivial
One of the most humorous uses of the term is in the movie “Blazing Saddles”. The movie is still run frequently on AMC and other cable/satallite outlets, but with the term silenced. In college the friends of mine that laughed hardest were black when we would watch the movie. The lighthearted and humorous use, if allowed to be heard today, would likely go a long way to diffuse the perceived aggregiousness of the term.
Then again, taking offense to something is a choice. In my personal opinion, taking offense or insult is a position of weakness, or guilt. Whether you believe in God (or not), “turning the other cheeck” is ALWAYS done from a position of strength and righteousness. Knowing that you have superior (insert quality) than the one attempting to insult or offend and choosing not to take the offense is the position of strength.
Then again, taking the care with your fellow man not to intentionally offend them shows love. Unintentional offense should be forgiven and quietly explained in private. Having the wisdom to recognize that perceived offense when none is intended, such as the current discussion surrounding place-names and descriptive terms for objects and organisms, is constructive. It’s just a shame that it will only reach a few tens of thousands of readers.
I’m never one to bow to P.C., but I don’t support using that word anywhere. It truly is offensive.
You can’t have a rational discussion about it. Maybe we should be able to use that word (if anyone can, then all should be able to), but you have to pick your fights and it make little sense to fight in favor of using it.
Speaking of fights, anybody remember the scene in ‘Rush Hour’ where Chris Tucker takes Jackie Chan into an inner city bar?
CodeTech says:
October 4, 2011 at 3:27 am
Thanks CodeTech, i was going to remark on that same story, but thought I would check first to see if someone else mentioned it.
Funny you should mention that. It seems some folks here in America have been quite strident about censoring that book. In some libraries they are replacing the original with a sanitized version.
A proper search of roots and affixes sometimes gives a whole new light to what some mistakenly call racist slurs. While this search may not pertain to niggerheads, it also just might. Words change, as do their meanings, as centuries erase their true origin.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1725/is-niggardly-a-racist-word
Well written piece about an explosive subject.
Words and sounds and the connotations they evoke in the minds of the listener. Don’t blame the word; blame what’s between the ears of listener and speaker.
On being sent to my first duty station in the military (Bangkok, Thailand), I was placed on a charter flight which also included wives and children. On arrival, we were all seated in a large hangar. As a very young and fairly innocent soldier seated among other single soldiers as well as wives and children, I was shocked to hear the clear, sing-song cry of one of the native lizards, “phuckyou, phuckyou”. To the local populace, it was just a sound the lizard made, bearing no special meaning. It was just the baggage of the listener that lent it special meaning (and embarrassment), especially in a social context. (I never really “heard” it after that during my three year stay; it just became part of the sound that surrounded me.)
I don’t doubt that in a couple centuries, the term “nigger” may still appear in obscure places. And when it does, people will use it without ascribing any special significance to it, unless they explore its etymology.
Joseph Conrad’s 19th century novella, The Nigger of the Narcissus: A Tale of the Sea, when first published in the U.S., had its title changed by the publisher to, The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle, not for any concerns about offending anyone’s sensibilities, but because the publisher was concerned that there was no market for a book about a black man, James Wait. Thanks to Wikipedia I’ve learned that stupidity knows no bounds and that a bowdlerized version has been published, The N-word of the Narcissus, in which the term “n-word” replaces the term “nigger” throughout the book. I suppose that’s a rather lame way of making a statement without wishing to offend … which manages to offend in any case. Why not just change the title to, James Wait of the Narcissus: A Tale of the Sea and replace the term “nigger” with the man’s name in a manner appropriate to the context, e.g. Jim, James, Wait, Mr. Wait, etc. The editor could then write a preface, explaining the changes made to the original and why. It seems that sometimes, intelligence ends where political correctness begins. While Conrad wrote about isolation and solidarity, today it’s seen as an early study in race relations. Again, modern intellectual baggage. Where race was incidental in the story, through modern eyes it becomes the key factor. It says less about Joseph Conrad’s story than it does about the barrenness of the modern mind.
Trivia note:
Forecastle is not pronounced the way it’s spelled … it’s more like folksuhl.
Bowdlerize … name derived from Thomas Bowdler, early 19th century physician who edited Shakespeare by omitting or changing words not suitable for women and children. The irony? He didn’t do any editing, his sister did, but 19th century sensibilities couldn’t admit to a woman understanding certain vulgarities.
Today the so-called N word is a chip upon the shoulder of many Blacks. I’m White, My Mother was British subject and my Dad was second generation Hungarian. As a child, I was to call Black people “colored people” or “negroes. The N word was an offense and my family was not allowed to use it.. I won’t claim I’ve never uttered the word, but it was not in my usual vernacular.
One day at work, (1990’s) I happened into a conversation between a white co-worker and a black co-worker about how whites should never use the N word. I said “black people say it all the time”.
I was set upon by my black friend in a suprising (to me) fashion ” Finger pointing in my face: “that’s our word. you can’t use it. If I ever hear you say it I’ll beat your ass” After that threat of violence, I did not consider him a friend anymore.
Political correctness is an attempt to be kind, but you cannot be kind by oppressing. Furthermore, oppressed people delight in breaking the rules of those who oppress, when they can get away with it. For example, check out how many compound words begin with the N-word in the urban dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nigger%20Amos
Anthony, very interesting history. Thanks for providing it.
There’s a river in Canada, FYI, named the Darky river. Presumably a similar story.
Yet, if I had owned a ranch with that name, I would have changed it. I feel my obligation is more to people alive today than to the history of a name. Why cause offense to people you know will be offended? Isn’t that just basic politeness?
“so I thought I’d share what I learned about this ugly and offensive term and how surprising the wide and varied use of it is.”
Judging the number of black comedians who use the term “nigger” as a staple word in their skits and do it primarily because non-black comedians can’t get away with it I find the whole brouhaha over the term and how very offensive it is to be politically contrived.
When it was named….that was not a bad word
This says volumes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22
The comment before this one says, “Yet, if I had owned a ranch with that name…”
Sorry guys, all I can say begins with a bunch of EXPLITIVES. “If I had owned a ranch with that name..” Can I suggest, even as in evaluating the Al Gore claim that he said, “When I INVENTED the internet…” versus what he REALLY SAID, “When I helped initiate the internet..” (I don’t LIKE Al Gore, but I won’t put words in his mouth when I know they are not true.) Similarily, we do now know that the “offending rock” is NOT ON PERRY PROPERTY. It is about 1/4 mile away on a trail head.
The only Perry connection (good Lord people pay attention) is that Perry’s FATHER painted it over (or had it painted over) in 1983. Because, by darn…HE thought it was offensive. White, bigoted, racist, Texan that he was…\sarc. So any other VERSIONS of this sad fabrication of a crisis are media manipulation. Who knows, maybe Perry likes this…faux controversy. He may come out looking GOOD in the end.
Max