A recent story by AP tells of a white teacher who was apparently
reprimanded for teaching her class the word "niggardly". A black
parent complained and the "conservative" press has been aglow with the
usual sniggering. I wanted to pursue this a bit, and of course the
context is all-important. In particular, the context of poverty rates
among black persons, racism, and the resulting discrimination. I
looked at the statistical abstract of the US for 1996, and it had
poverty rates broken down by race, and by state, but not by race and
state. The last ratio I could find for th US was about 11% poverty
for whites, versus about 30% poverty for blacks. I'm curious if NC
has higher ratios, or about the same. I'm also interested in other
evidence which might shed light on why a black woman might feel
uncomfortable with the word "niggardly".
The "conservative" commentators say the word means only "stingy", and
is "completely different" from the word "nigger". Imagine the word
"ChristF*ck" being used in Muslim-dominated society in which
Christians were an impoverished and repressed minority as a term to
mean that a Christian were nothing but an animal disguised as a human,
and then imagine a Christian child being taught by a Muslim teacher in
a predominantly Muslim school the word "KrystFoqqer". My guess is
that context would suddenly become very important and the "meaning" of
the word would derive more from this context and less from it's
literal etymology.
In any case, if anyone has a bit to add to this, I'd be happy to hear.
Thanks.
Bill