Everything about Pickaninny totally explained
Pickaninny (also
picaninny or
piccaninny) is a term – generally considered derogatory – that in
English usage refers to black children, or a caricature of them which is widely considered
racist. It is a
pidgin word form, which may be derived from the
Portuguese pequenino ("little little [one]").
Usage
In the
Southern United States,
pickaninny was long used to refer to the children of African slaves or (later) of
African American citizens. While this use of the term was popularized in reference to the character of
Topsy in the 1852 book
Uncle Tom's Cabin, the term was used as early as 1831 in an anti-slavery tract "The History of
Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, related by herself" published in
Edinburgh, Scotland. The term was still in some popular use in the US as late as the 1930s; while it has largely fallen out of use and is now considered offensive, the term is still part of the
American lexicon.
Although the term was used generally, it came to refer to the associated stereotype among white Americans of African American children. "Picaninnies had bulging eyes, unkempt hair, red lips and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon."
The Picaninny was distinguished by its young age, male or female. "They were also half dressed and animalistic. The picaninny was seen as one of a multitude of black children – disregarded and disposable." That the pickaninny was often naked or half-naked has been interpreted by some to imply that black parents neglected the well-being of their children.
Examples
In the middle section of
Margaret Mitchell's best-selling 1936 epic
Gone with the Wind, one of the novel's sympathetic characters,
Melanie Wilkes, objects to her husband's intended move to
New York because it'll mean that their children will be educated alongside Yankee children and pickaninnies.
Flannery O'Connor's 1955 short story collection
A Good Man is Hard to Find contains the following:
"Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved.
The term was controversially quoted ("wide-eyed grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician
Enoch Powell, reading from a letter 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."
The word was used by Australian country music legend
Slim Dusty in the lyrics of his 1987 "
nursery-rhyme-style" song "Boomerang": "Every picaninny knows, that's where the
roly-poly goes". The lyrics may also be an allusion to the
Piccaninny crater in
Western Australia.
Prior to becoming the
Mayor of London,
Boris Johnson apologized for any offence caused by an article in which he sarcastically suggested that "the
Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies".
Related terms
Cognates of the term appear in other languages and cultures, presumably also derived from the Portuguese word, and it isn't controversial or derogatory in these contexts. 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 are used to refer to children. Also in
Sierra Leone Krio the term
pikín refers to
child or
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. In
Surinamese
Sranan Tongo the term
pikin may refer to
children as well as to
small or
little.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Pickaninny'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://pickaninny.totallyexplained.com">Pickaninny Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
