Pickaninny
Encyclopedia : P : PI : PIC : Pickaninny
- For the chess term, see Chess problem terminology.
In the Southern United States, it was long used to refer to African American children. This use of the term is believed to have originated with the character of Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The term was still in some popular use in the US as late as the 1930s, but has largely fallen out of use and is now considered racist.
It is in widespread use in Melanesian pidgin and creole languages such as Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea, as the word for "child" (or just young, as in the phrase pikinini pik, meaning piglet). In certain dialects of Caribbean English, the words pickney and pickney-negger (pronounced "pick-knee" and "pick-knee nay-ga" respectively) are used to refer to children. In Nigerian and Cameroonian Pidgin English, the term used is "picken". In Chilapalapa, a pidgin language used in Southern Africa, the term used is "pikanin".
The term was also controversially used ("wide-eyed grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell in his "Rivers of Blood" speech on 20 April 1968. In 1987, Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona defended the use of the word, claiming "As I was a boy growing up, blacks themselves referred to their children as pickaninnies. That was never intended to be an ethnic slur to anybody."1
Footnotes
- Note 1:
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