White nigger

White nigger was a derogatory and offensive term, dating from the nineteenth century, for a black person who deferred to white people or a white person who did menial work.[1] It was later used as a slur against white activists involved in the civil rights movement such as James Groppi of Milwaukee.[2]

The term "white niggers" was uttered twice by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia in an interview on national television in 2001.[3]

During all the 19th century until the early part of the 20th, Italian immigrants in the United States were often referred to as "white niggers".[4]

In another use of the term, Pierre Vallières's work White Niggers of America refers to French Canadians.[5]

The White Nigger was a nickname given to the nineteenth-century English explorer Richard Burton by colleagues in the East India Company Army.[6]

"White nigger" was never widely used to refer to Irish Catholics, in the context of The Troubles in Northern Ireland,[7] despite an example of this being found in the Elvis Costello song "Oliver's Army", which contains the lyric: "Only takes one itchy trigger. One more widow, one less white nigger."[8]

In May 2016, Gerry Adams, the Leader of Sinn Féin, was criticised after writing on his Twitter account "Watching Django Unchained - A Ballymurphy Nigger!" Ballymurphy is an area of Belfast best known for an eponymous massacre. Adams deleted the comment, and subsequently wrote "[Anyone] who saw Django would know my tweets & N-word were ironic. Nationalists in [the North] were treated like African Americans."[9]

The term was applied to Irish immigrants to the United States and their descendants. The Irish were also nicknamed "Negroes turned inside-out", while African Americans would be described as "smoked Irish".[10]