So drearily predictable you could replace him with an algorithm
Martin Robbins on the leaden predictability of Brendan O’Neill:
Me on the N-word in 2013 vs. Brendan O’Neill in 2017. So drearily predictable you could replace him with an algorithm. pic.twitter.com/DaJFVeg3HE
— Martin F. Robbins (@mjrobbins) July 12, 2017
I found the two sources.
Martin in the New Statesman in 2013:
“Niggers put the ape in rape.” If an opinion columnist wrote that on the websites attached to their newspapers, we’d be facing questions in the Commons, earnest debates on Newsnight, and a lazy column about how “nigger” isn’t really a bad word after all scribbled on the back of a fag packet by one of the professional attention-seekers at Spiked!. This sentiment was posted on Twitter though, and nobody really cares because, well . . . Twitter.
Brendan O’Neill in Spiked two days ago:
Sharpen the pitchforks, fan the flames: a politician has misspoken.
Yes, another day, another Twitch-hunt. Another live-tweeted expulsion from polite society. Another roll-up-roll-up real-time destruction of a person’s reputation for the crime of having said something stupid.
The victim this time is Anne Marie Morris, the Tory MP for Newton Abbot. She was recorded dumbly using the outdated phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ at a gathering of Eurosceptic Tories at the East India Club in London. Ms Morris said ‘the real nigger in the woodpile’ in the Brexit issue is what happens if we get two years down the line and there’s still no deal between Britain and the EU. So she was clearly using the phrase in its classic sense to mean an issue of great importance that isn’t being openly or sufficiently discussed. She wasn’t being racist, just old-fashioned. Phew. We can call off the Twitterhounds, put back the tomatoes.
Its “classic” sense? What, that phrase originated with Aristophanes, or maybe it was Cicero on a bad day? So the phrase has a “classic” sense that is in no way contemptuously racist and demeaning? It’s just one of those hallowed British idioms from the golden past that haven’t got a mean bone in their body?
Whatever. At any rate there’s your lazy column about how “nigger” isn’t really a bad word after all scribbled on the back of a fag packet by the chief professional attention-seeker at Spiked!.
If I remember this correctly, A Nigger in the Woodpile was the original title of an Agatha Christie novel, later re-named The Mirror Crack’d. The original phrase meant exactly what it sounds like, a black person hiding in a dark place waiting to do mischief being used as a metaphor for some unforeseen future trouble that was there all along but hidden and undetected by dint of good camouflage. The title was changed for the obvious reason, it was plainly a racist, out-dated and unacceptable phrase.
O’Neil’s ‘classic sense’ definition is more of the elephant in the room. The pillock can’t even get his metaphors right.
I think I’ve mentioned this before – I once read a novel by Francis King, written in the early 50s, that used the phrase “nigger brown” repeatedly – not as an epithet or (apparent) provocation but just as if it were a standard color label like tomato red or butter yellow. It was deeply weird and I was unable not to be repelled by it every time…along with baffled at how often it came up, to label different objects.
I’m English. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrase used. Not in private, not in public. And I have a grandmother who also insisted n****r brown was a legitimate colour name. That was in the early 1980s (she was in her seventies at the time).
Where on earth did she drag that one up from in this day and age? And why should we excuse a person who has chosen to become a pulic figure, doing a job the essence of which is negotiating with people, who considers there is any justification for using such a phrase? She’s not your racist Uncle Bob down the local pontificating over a pint. We have a right to expect more of her.
I’ve seen the expression used in a 50s older children’s book. I doubt if it’s been in common use since the 60s. It’s very antiquated sounding. I’ve never heard it used in speech. I bet Brendan O’Neill hasn’t either.
Sorry, forgot link:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/this-is-the-scariest-twitch-hunt-yet/20064#.WWZ9MYTyvm4
It’s bizarre the way the language just keeps these horrid remnants around.
I grew up in the 80s, in Chicago’s near south suburbs. The area was what passed for ‘racially diverse’ at that time (meaning the banks engineered block-by-block buyouts to chase white flight and flip entire communities over the course of a few years). So schools were generally mixed in our area.
As a white kid, you never, ever used the n-word as a direct epithet unless you were genuinely looking for a fight, and probably one you’d lose. But I can think of no fewer than three very common uses of the word as a prefix, of sorts, attached to stereotyped images of black behavior.
Over time, one of those has been transformed (into ‘jury-rigged’–it didn’t use to be ‘jury’). The others have been completely lost, and good riddance. But it’s like we, as a species (at least, as the privileged members of the species) can’t just fucking STOP being shits. We have to wean ourselves off of it as if it were an addiction.
I think that depends on where you grew up. I heard it quite a bit, usually to refer to someone who had some African ancestry, even though they were white. The idea being that there was someone meeting the “wrong” color person in secret and getting pregnant as a result.
I also heard it used when a white woman would give birth to a non-white baby, even though her husband was white.
I hate the phrase. It’s not “classic”, it’s racist.
I’ve never seen or heard the phrase used in person. To a British audience it is a very shocking thing to say in public, especially if the person saying it is a public figure. The very kindest thought to be had about Anne Marie Morris in this regard is that she obviously does not have all her constituents in mind when she says, does or thinks anything.
My mother in law used to say “nigger brown” fairly often until I asked her to stop. She genuinely didn’t seem to understand why it is problematic. She was quite upset that she might have “come across as” racist when I explained and (as far as I know) hasn’t used the term since. Sadly, she wasn’t just “coming across” as racist, she’s actually just plain old racist. She sounds like a Daily Express headline generator at times.
@Freemage:
I had to look this up. I assumed that you were referring to the term “jerry rigged” and saying that was problematic in some way. I’m glad to say it isn’t as I’ve used both terms. They appear to be nautical and non-racist in origin.
But as I was looking this up, the ugly phrase you were presumably referring to dropped out of a search. That is…. not pleasant. Jury (and Jerry) Rigging predates it by many years, so your origin story seems to be wrong, but HOLY FUCK. What are people DOING going around saying shit like that, even unthinkingly?
Jury or Jerry Rigging as I understand it means to improvise a fix with whatever tools and materials are to hand. It’s not ideal but it is expedient and gets the job done. “N****r Rigging” is when something is done incompetently. The hatred just drips out of the phrase, doesn’t it?
I actually read the phrase in an essay by a colleague. It was from the fifties. In context it was just about exactly equivalent to ‘skeleton in the closet.’ An unacknowledged family secret, e.g. Sally Hemmings’ tall, red-haired, children.
Even at the softest level, like that example, it is a spectacularly awkward idiom, and one which has no real use. Do any lexicographers have a trace on how far back it goes, or whether the meaning ever shifted?
John, I’m no lexicographer or other student of language but I think the meaning of the phrase has been clear throughout:
The “nigger in the woodpile” is the threat one imagines, the threat we totally know is there, even though we can’t see it and have no evidence for it. We know it’s there because those damned people have the temerity to exist. No doubt the woodpile part has specific connotations I’m not aware of but it certainly refers to a threat of some sort hiding, but…. which we know is there anyway because we know who to blame if anything bad happens. And if it doesn’t happen, the threat is still there because we know it is.
I was aware of the phrase even though I’d never heard it in real life. I hadn’t realised it was used rather a lot (as other people here have said) to describe bizarre cuckoldry fantasies and the inappropriate response to people that racists for some reason believe have been wronged. It doesn’t surprise me, though.
Very much the reason humans need to stop using phrases like this.
Striking point. Thank you, Freemage.
Agreed.
As a small (brown) girl, playing outside in the (cellphone/mp3-player-less) streets of Montreal, I remember first hearing a children’s rhyme that went: “Eeny meeny, miny moe; catch a nigger by the toe; if he hollers let him go…” etc., and I happily chimed in. By the time I learned what “nigger” meant, the rhyme had disappeared from our neighbourhood. In French, the formal term was “noir”, but it was not uncommon to hear the English word “blacks” used in French.
Interestingly, one of the traditional meanings of “nègre” (which I only discovered in university), is “ghost writer”.
http://www.theroot.com/how-do-you-say-the-n-word-in-french-1790881385
@Helene
I sang that rhyme when I was in Primary School – that’s age five – seven, which for me was 1974 -1976. It’s appalling to think of it now. By the time I was in Junior school (age 8 – 10, so 1977 – 1979) the word in the rhyme was already being replaced by “tiger” which, as far as I know, is the version most of the current generation of that age know. My kids (now 22 and 19) were genuinely shocked when I told the the version my generation knew.
The late 70s/early 80s was, in the UK at least, a period when a lot of this stuff was finally seen as unacceptable. Enid Blyton’s golliwog baddies were phased out in favour of teddy bear baddies instead. Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indiand” (already changed from “Ten Little N*****s”) became “And Then There Were None”. That kind of thing.
@Steamshovelmama we are obviously sock puppets of each other. I sang that same rhyme at exactly the same time. For some reason, the replacement word in the north east was “tigger” rather than “tiger” though.
@ latsot
Hello sockpuppet twin! It’s interesting that in the NE it’s “tigger” – which actually makes more sense in terms of the scansion. I’m in the Midlands and it definitely became tiger round here.
Steamshovelmama & Latsot, I can join that club too, although I’m a few years older. Certainly by the lat ’70s Tiger was in use here. Every now and then you still hear a grandparents voice catch for a split second as they perform the mental edit required to sing the new version to their grandkids.
Our family had a golliwog, hand made by my grandmother. It was passed down though all the kids and was very much loved. The last time I saw or heard about golliwogs was at uni in the 80’s. There was a one women play at the Student’s Association called Conversations with a Golliwog. It attracted protest and sparked fierce debate. The play itself was very powerfully performed and the golliwog was an object of trust, support and love. Proof that issues can be complex, even where the origin of an idea can be hateful.
I’ve never heard the tiger/tigger versions of Eeny Meeny. I recall two versions from childhood – also in the Midlands – one from the late 1960’s which was ‘……put the baby on the po. When it’s done, wipe its bum…’ and the early ’70s was ‘…..catch a piggy by the toe. If it squeals, let it go….’ I only started hearing the latter version after we moved from a city to a rural market town 15 miles away.
Unfortunately, the N version remained common and is still heard occasionally, usually from the Jeremy Clarkson set.
Oh, I’ve heard the piggy one as well – recovered memory!. Although this one was more common in our family…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Little_Piggy
Jeremy Clarkson always was, and always will be, a complete prat, to paraphrase Spock.