pickaninny

Pickaninny (also picaninny or piccaninny) is an potentially offensive derogatory term in English which refers to children of black descent or a racial caricature thereof. It is a pidgin word form, which may be derived from the Portuguese pequenino (an affectionate term derived from pequeno, "little"). The term has also been used in the past to describe aboriginal Australians, although it is now rarely used and is not viewed as offensive as in other countries ^[1].

Usage

Reproduction of an old tin sign advertising Picaninny Freeze, a frozen treat.

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 1960s; 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 of African American children. The Pickaninny was distinguished by its young age, male or female.

Examples

In literature, films, and music

Scott Joplin used the term in his piece "I am thinking of my pickanniny days," written in 1902.

Throughout his 1935 travel book Journey Without Maps, British author Graham Greene uses "piccaninny" as a general term for African children. In Margaret Mitchell's best-selling 1936 epic Gone with the Wind, Melanie Wilkes objects to her husband's intended move to New York because it would mean that their children would be educated alongside Yankees and pickaninnies. Orson Scott Card's historical fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker uses the term, such as in Seventh Son: "Papooses learnt to hunt, pickaninnies learnt to tote...."

A 1940 cover of The Beano featuring a picaninny caricature top-left.

The British comic-strip The Beano originally featured a picaninny caricature as a mascot on its front cover. The caricature was dropped by the end of the Second World War.

In the 1940 film Philadelphia Story, photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) uses the term while inspecting the house of Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). In the 1987 movie Burglar, Ray Kirschman (played by G.W. Bailey) confronts ex-con Bernice Rhodenbarr (Whoopi Goldberg) in her bookstore by saying "now listen here pickaninny!"

In the opening line of Robert Wise's 1959 film Odds Against Tomorrow which tackled issues of racism, Robert Ryan's character picks up a young black girl after she bumps into him and says, "You little pickaninny, you're gonna kill yourself flying like that."

The word was used by Australian country music performer Slim Dusty in the lyrics of his 1987 "nursery-rhyme-style" song "Boomerang": "Every picaninny knows, that's where the roly-poly goes.". Within Australia, it is also a common name used for landscape features, including Piccaninny crater and Picanniny point ^[2].

Many old lullabies have the word Pickaninny in it - used as an affectionate term for babies - ofen interchangeable with a child's name, ie: to personalize the song many families have substituted the children's name. "It's time for little Pickaninnys to go to sleep."^{[citation needed]}

Pickaninny was used by Oakland Police officers in a denigrating fashion in the 1995 Mario Van Peebles film Panther to describe an African American child who was killed in a car accident.

Controversial usage

The term was controversially used ("wide-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."^[3] Before 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."^[4][5]

Chess term

The term is in current use as a technical term in Chess Problems, for a particular set of moves by a black pawn.

Related terms

Cognates of the term appear in other languages and cultures, presumably also derived from the Portuguese word, and it is not 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 Nigerian Pidgin, the word is used to mean a child.^[6] And in Sierra Leone Krio^[7] the term pikin refers to child or children. 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. Some of these words may be more directly related to the Portuguese pequeno than to pequenino, the source of pickaninny.

See also

• Blackface
• Golliwog
• Nigger
• Pygmy
• Sambo (racial term)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Zwarte Piet (Black Pete)

References

External links

• An article on the Pickaninny caricature
•  "Piccaninny". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.