Moments of Permanence - Wait, what?

From: troubleinchina.livejournal.com Date: March 31st, 2009 04:52 am (UTC) (Link)

There is something about that niggling at the back of my head, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It has something to do with some readings in my thesis class. I'll try and think about it more in the morning.

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From: seselt.livejournal.com Date: April 1st, 2009 12:30 pm (UTC) (Link)

Once the word nigger was established as a pejorative it has been used against a variety of disenfranchised groups. The Irish have been called 'the niggers of Europe' as have the Gypsies.

I think this is because the coloured to white racist epithets like craker (from African-Americans) or ghost (from Chinese) were rarely heard in Europe until after WW2. If your source document dates from 1839, I doubt the author would have been aware of any Caucasion denigrating insults. So a white person would probably use an established curse to belittle his/her target group. Pretty much the only other choice than nigger would be calling someone a Jew and anti-semitism was never as rife in England as it was in the rest of Europe.

A white person calling another white person a nigger is credible to me as I saw a documentary where an ethnic Russian was referring to ethnic Chechens as 'blacks' in a very derogatory way.

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