"I find it offensive not because of the word but the implication behind my in law's use of the word. "
I wouldn't read so much into it. Phrases have a life of their own. Now, "white nigger" doesn't have a lot of history here. Poor white trash, trailer trash, or white trash, does. I am not conversant with Central Florida, but that might be more common there than here.
Now here, there is the term "nigger rigging". While the word "nigger" has lost its usage for decades, "nigger rigging" hung on for longer. I used to own a Triumph TR6. A big weak point was the muffler. Not only did it require a custom muffler, the positioning was such that the muffler hanger regularly broke. A friend of mine worked at a car repair shop, and I was allowed access to their lift. So one day, I was trying to compensate for the broken muffler hanger with an old clothes hanger. While I was wrapping the wire around the muffler pipe, two black guys came over to watch. One poked me in the arm and said "we call that type of repair nigger rigging". My reply was "yeah, but I prefer the phrase "afro-american engineering".". I was shooting for humor, and it worked. The two of them were literally falling over with laughter. But, realistically speaking, there is little difference in the two phrases. Both invoke the very poor's tendency to make do instead of doing the job right. But, afro-american engineering also was a play on the PC tendency to soft-peddle things. And they appreciated it. This was in the '70s. There were few, if any whites who would use the word "nigger". But the phrase "nigger rigging" was still current, although a white person would be rather circumspect around those of darker skin hue. That doesn't seem to have changed over the decades.
So it could be that she picked a phrase out of her childhood. "White nigger" wouldn't fly in the Tampa area. Or, at least, I never heard it there. But Central Florida shares more with the Panhandle than the coasts. In other words, you will find more born Floridians there than you will on either coast. So it very well could be that the phrase "white nigger" has had a longer life than the word "nigger". It happens.
In the case of your in law, would "white trash" or "trailer trash" be more acceptable? |
