American Language Supplement 1

by H. L. Mencken

  Whether or not Bronx cheer embodies an allusion to the Jews who swarm in the Bronx I do not know. Bronx vanilla, for garlic, obviously does.2 Jewish engineering is used in some of the colleges to designate the course in business administration, and Jewish cavalry is an old term for the quartermaster’s corps of the Army.

  299. [The Negroes carry on a double campaign — first, against the use of nigger, and secondly, for the capitalization of Negro. On March 7, 1930, when the New York Times announced that it would capitalize Negro thereafter, there was jubilation in the Negro press.] This decision of the Times was brought about by representations from Major Robert Russa Moton, LL.D., Litt.D., then principal of Tuskegee Institute,3 but the movement had been launched seventeen years before by Lester Aglar Walton, a colored journalist who, in 1935, was made envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Liberia. “In 1913,” Mr. Walton says of himself in “Who’s Who in America,” “with coöperation of Associated Press, started movement for capitalization of N in Negro.” The Times, in fact, was rather behind the procession, and on March 9, 1930, two days after its own surrender, it printed a list prepared by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, showing that the following other newspapers were already using Negro: the New York World, Herald Tribune and Telegram, the Brooklyn Eagle, the Springfield (Mass.) Republican and News, the Christian Science Monitor of Boston, the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald, the Chicago Herald-Examiner, the Newark News, the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, the Durham (N. C.) Sun, the Sacramento Bee, the Raleigh (N. C.) News, the Omaha Bee, the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican, the Indianapolis Times, the Trenton Gazette, the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, and the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer-Sun. In addition, these weeklies and monthlies had also fallen into line: the Atlantic Monthly, the American Mercury, the Nation, the New Republic, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Living Church, and Time. Finally, Negro was being used in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, then in progress, in all books published by the Macmillan Company, Duffield & Company, Harcourt, Brace & Company, Alfred A. Knopf, and Doubleday, Doran & Company, and by the United States Census Bureau, the Bureau of Education, and the whole Department of Commerce. In March, 1933, the Style Manual of the Government Printing Office was revised to make Negro and Negress begin with capitals in all official publications of the United States, including the Congressional Record. The Pittsburgh Courier, the most widely circulated of Negro newspapers, hailed the conversion of the Times with an exultant editorial on March 15, 1930, but its star columnist, the sardonic George S. Schuyler,1 refused to agree that the colored folk “universally wished” to become Negroes, and on the same day printed the following:

  It really doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn whether Negro is spelled with a small or large N, so far as the Negro’s economic, political and cultural status is concerned. The gabble, mostly senseless, to the contrary has vastly amused me for, if anything, it is worse to spell Negro with a large N than with a small one, and if I had my way I would discontinue it.…

  The truth is that the American Negro is an amalgam of Caucasian, Amerindian and African, there being but 20 per cent “pure,” and those are the only ones entitled to the term Negro when used as a descriptive adjective. Geographically, we are neither Ethiopians or Africans, but Americans. Culturally, we are Anglo-Saxons.

  Used as a noun, the term is therefore a designation of a definite social caste, an under-dog, semi-serf class which believes it is dignifying its status by a capitalization of the term by which it is called and recognized. This is the same thing as arguing that an imbecile is somewhat ennobled by spelling the word with a capital I or that a convict has his status improved by spelling the word with a capital C. Lifting Negro from the lower case to the upper typographically does not in the least elevate him socially. As a matter of fact, it fits right in with the program of racial segregation. As negroes we are about 3,000,000 strong, as Negroes we are 12,000,000 strong; as negroes we are a definite physical type, as Negroes we are a definite social class. It is significant that Southern newspapers and magazines were more ready and willing to make the change in Negro than the Northern publications. The former are ever eager to make the Negro satisfied with his place; the latter based their objections on etymological and grammatical grounds.…

  The possession of physical characteristics or ancestry different from other people by any citizen should not be constantly emphasized and brought to the attention of newspaper readers, especially in this country. The interests of interracial peace demand the abolition of such references and we ought to fight for that and lose no time trying to get white folks to “dignify” a socio-chromatic caste system established and maintained by them for their own convenience and economic advantage. There is something ridiculous about a so-called Negro bellowing against color discrimination and segregation while wearing out his larynx whining for a glorification of his Jim Crow status in society through capitalization of the N in Negro.

  Mr. Schuyler returned to the subject many times afterward. Thus on July 17, 1937:

  Negro clearly belongs with blonde, brunette, ruddy, mulatto, octoroon and such descriptive terms, and has no stronger claim on capitalization.… Capitalized, it tends to bolster the status quo, and thus is at best conservative and at worst reactionary, for it discourages differentiation and strengthens the superstition that “all coons are alike.”

  And again on March 20, 1943:

  Negro is either an adjective meaning black or it is a caste name like Sudra.1 When we eagerly accept it as a group designation, regardless of our skin tint, we are accepting all the “racial” nonsense of Hitler, Bilbo, and the myriads who believe as they do — at least in the day time.

  Mr. Schuyler’s ideas, of course, got but little support from the general run of American colored folk, or from their accepted fuglemen and haruspices. Even so intelligent and independent a leader of the race as Dr. Kelly Miller1 was moved to dissent. In 1937 Dr. Miller contributed a thoughtful article, under the title of “Negroes or Colored People?” to Opportunity, the organ of the National Urban League,2 and in it said:

  A printed list consisting of Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Jews and negroes would evidently be a case of unexplained typographical discrimination. If it be said that Negro is not derived from a country or geographical division, as other racial designations are, an adequate rejoinder would be that neither is Jew.3

  In this article Dr. Miller rehearsed the history of the common American designations of persons of his race. In the first days of slavery, he said, they were called simply blacks, and even after interbreeding lightened their color the term continued in use “in a generic sense.” Then came African, which was accepted by the race “in the early years, after it first came to self-consciousness,” and still survives in the titles of some of its religious organizations, e.g., the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. (This, according to the DAE, was during the first half of the Eighteenth Century.) A bit later darky or darkey began to be used, and “at first it carried no invidious implication.” (The DAE’s first example is dated 1775.) Then came Africo-American (1835 or thereabout), but it was too clumsy to be adopted.4 After the Civil War freedman was in wide use, but it began to die out before the end of the 70s.5 In 1880 Afro-American was invented by T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age, and it still survives, but only in rather formal usage.6 “Mr. Fortune,” said Dr. Miller, “repudiated the word Negro because of the historical degradation and humiliation attached to it.” At some undetermined time after 1900 Sir Harry Johnston, the English African explorer and colonial administrator,1 shortened Afro-American to Aframerican, but the latter has had but little vogue.2 After rehearsing, in his article, the history of all these appellations, Dr. Miller turned to Negro and colored, and proceeded to discuss their respective claims to general adoption. The latter, he concluded, could not qualify, for it was properly applicable to any person not white, including Chinese, Japanese, Indians and Mexicans, and had been so applied in various State la
ws, and even, at least by inference, in Federal population statistics.3 Thus his reasoning:

  Try, if you will, to express the idea involved in Negro art, Negro music, Negro poetry, Negro genius, the Journal of Negro History, the Journal of Negro Education and the Negro Handbook in terms of the word colored and see what a lamentable weakness would result from this substitution.… The term Negro is far superior to the term colored in grammatical inflection, for it may be used either as a noun or as an adjective, whereas colored has no nominal equivalent. Unlike the words black and white it does not pluralize into a noun.… The word people, race or persons must be added to give collective or plural effect.… This handicap is seen in the possessive case.… Again, the word Negro may be easily inflected into Negroid by adding the Greek ending -oid, which implies likeness or resemblance to. This term may be used either as a noun or an adjective, and forms an apt designation of the derivatives of African blood now scattered through the world.

  Dr. Miller admitted that “such terms as colored lady, colored gentleman and colored society” sounded “more polite than the corresponding Negro equivalents,” but argued that the preference for them probably grew out of “that to which the ear is accustomed.” He went on:

  Many of the off-colored group object to the term Negro because it serves as a reminder of the humiliation and degradation through which the race has passed. The fact that Negro is now used to describe the group does not indicate any lesser degree of appreciation or esteem.… Any race or group, in the long run, will derive its reputation from its character and worth, and not from the appellation by which it is known.… Sensitiveness about a name is always a sign of the inferiority complex.

  Dr. Miller, going further than most other advocates of Negro, was also willing to accept Negress, which is intolerably offensive to most high-toned colored folk. Here the iconoclastic Schuyler agreed with him, saying,

  If we accept the term Negro there is no sound reason for spurning Negress, and yet its use is discouraged and condemned without, of course, any sensible argument being advanced for this position. I understand Jews are similarly unreasonable about the term Jewess.1

  But despite this agreement of two high Negro authorities the Atlantic Monthly got into hot water when, in October, 1935, it used Negress in an editorial reference to a colored contributor, Miss Juanita Harrison, author of a serial entitled “My Great, Wide, Beautiful World.” Moreover, it added to its offense by speaking of the lady by her given name alone, without the honorific Miss. Protests came in promptly, and one of them, from Isadore Cecelia Williams, of Washington, was printed in the issue for December, along with an editorial explanation. I take the following from Miss (or Mrs.?) Williams’s letter:

  Negress … is obnoxious to Negroes chiefly because of the sordid, loose, and often degrading connotations it has been forced to carry. From the standpoint of etymology I believe I am right in saying that the use of ess as a suffix to designate the women of any race is practically obsolete. Out of courtesy to a race and a sex I suggest that you hereafter discard the offensive term Negress.

  It was petty, to say the least, to refer to Miss Harrison as Juanita in the editorial preface to her letters. Perhaps it is mere class distinction, but class distinction should be beneath the dignity of your pages. A witness in a recent kidnapping case, though only a nursemaid, was referred to as Miss Betty Gow. Certainly Miss Harrison, whose honesty you commend and whose native intelligence merited a place in your pages, deserves at least common courtesy at your hands.

  To this the editor of the Atlantic replied somewhat lamely that he “really did not know that the word Negress carried a derogatory connotation.” “I suppose,” he went on, “that the feeling must come from the analogy of the suffix -ess being used throughout the animal kingdom.” In further confession and avoidance he cited the parallel terms, Jewess and Quakeress, conveniently overlooking the fact (maybe also unknown to him) that the former is vastly disliked by Jews. As to the use of her simple given-name in referring to Miss Harrison he said:

  In the correspondence regarding her which came from a former employer she was continually referred to as Juanita, and it was natural to transfer this designation to the Atlantic. We certainly meant no disrespect, for as you surmise, we thought her an honest, interesting and able character.

  Other Negro publicists have proposed various substitutes for any designation pointing directly to color, among them race and group. According to Dr. Miller, racemen was suggested in 1936 or thereabout by Robert S. Abbott, editor of the Chicago Defender. Dr. Miller himself rejected it as equally applicable to a white man or an Indian and predicted that it would “fall under the weight of its own ineptness.” It has, however, survived more or less, and group is really flourishing. Many of the Negro newspapers use our group, group man, group leader, etc. At present the objection to Negro, now capitalized by nearly all American publications, takes two forms. First, there is a campaign against using it whenever a person of color comes into the news, on the ground that calling attention to his race is gratuitous, and usually damaging to the other members of it. Thus an anonymous Negro quoted by R. E. Wolseley:

  Why is it necessary to differentiate us so clearly? We don’t see newspaper reporters identifying a man in a newspaper story as a Catholic or a Methodist or a Brazilian or a Frenchman. Why go to so much pains to explain that his color is black?1

  In this objection, of course, there is a certain falsetto, for the question whether a certain person in the news is white or black is often of interest and even of importance, especially in the South. Very few Negroes object when a newspaper describes Paul Robeson as an eminent Negro singer or reminds its readers that Joe Lewis is a Negro who has slaughtered a long line of whites; they are heard from principally when it is recorded that Negro pickpockets have been at work or that Negro soldiers have staged a riot. Only Schuyler, so far as I am aware, has ever argued for “the doing away entirely of the word.” “There is no more reason why we should say Negro educator or Negro criminal,” he once wrote, “than we should say white educator or white criminal.”2 But this will remain a feeble argument so long as Negro educators are differentiated in function from their white colleagues, and Negro criminals, at least in some areas, constitute a specialized faculty. In more logical moments Schuyler argues plausibly that all such verbal reforms and ameliorations are in vain — that the race conflict in the United States will never be abated until the overwhelming majority of whites are induced to look at Negroes with more tolerant eyes, and with less than their present uneasiness.3

  The other objection to Negro has to do with the fact that the word is frequently mispronounced, and tends to slide into the hated nigger. In the South it is commonly heard as nigrah, and not only from white lips.1 Indeed, nigrah is also used by Northern Negroes, including some of the most eminent, as witness the following protest from a reader of the Pittsburgh Courier:

  A great many professional Negro orators, prominent speakers, leaders and so on are speaking on the radio all over the country — on forums, “March of Time” programs, etc. Nearly all make the one big noticeable error of pronouncing Negro as if it were spelled nigro2 or nigrah.… It is all the more noticeable when white people are on the same program. They pronounce Negro correctly, with the emphasis on ne and not nig.3

  Worse, even the abhorred nigger is in wide use among the colored people themselves, at least upon the lower levels. Said Lucius Harper, managing editor of the Chicago Defender, in 1939:

  It is a common expression among the ordinary Negroes and is used frequently in conversation between them. It carries no odium or sting when used by themselves, but they object keenly to whites using it because it conveys the spirit of hate, discrimination and prejudice.4

  Nigger is so bitterly resented by the more elegant blackamoors that they object to it even in quotations, and not a few of their papers spell it n—r when necessity forces them to use it.5 On March 4, 1936, Garnet C. Wilkinson, first assistant superintendent of schools of Wa
shington, in charge of the Negro public schools of the District of Columbia, actually recommended to Superintendent F. W. Ballou that Opportunity, organ of the National Urban League and for years a recognized leader among Negro magazines, be barred from the schools of the District on the ground that it used “the opprobrious term N— in its publications on Negro life.” When news of this recommendation reached Elmer A. Carter, editor of Opportunity, he naturally protested, and under date of March 11 received the following from Dr. Wilkinson:

  It is contrary to a long established administrative policy, initiated and fostered by the school teachers and officers of Divisions 10–13 of the public schools of the District,1 to recommend to the Board of Education the adoption of any textbook, basic or supplementary, magazine, or periodical known to make use of the term N— in its publication.

  Textbooks published by white authors and making use of such material have been refused for adoption in our public schools. Textbooks have been withdrawn from the approved list for the same reason. Obviously, a textbook, magazine, or periodical published by a Negro should be subject to the same administrative policy. There can be no double standard of evaluating such school materials — one standard for white authors, another standard for Negro authors.

  You are now advised that this office would be willing to recommend the placing of Opportunity on the approved list of magazines and periodicals for the public schools of the District if you, as editor, will give us the assurance that Opportunity will discontinue the policy of using any opprobrious term or terms in referring to the Negro.

  Mr. Carter replied to this curious communication under date of March 17, as follows:

  Even a casual examination of the magazine will reveal that your recommendation has been based on a total misconception of the use of the term nigger when it appears in Opportunity. That use is limited to quotations from other writers or is the reproduction in poem or story of the speech and conversation of characters who commonly use this term, and in both cases the word or the line in which it occurs is always set off by quotation marks, italics, or other literary and printing insignia.