ABSTRACT
Those who were children before the 1920s—and many later than that, no doubt, in some localities—remember the innocent merriment of racial slurs: Eenie-meenie-miney-mo, Catch a nigger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eenie-meenie-miney-mo. Smarty, Smarty had a party; Nobody came but a big fat darkie.
‘For a black writer in this country to be born into the English language,’ says James Baldwin, ‘is to realize that the assumptions on which the language operates are his enemy…. I was forced to reconsider similes: as black as sin, as black as night, blackhearted.’ 1
What breeds contempt is misfortune and weakness; familiarity perpetuates it. The language that white children heard taught them to despise their former slaves as surely as parades and band music taught them to respect the flag. The attitudes were implicit in the symbols. It was enough for the words and phrases to be THERE.