Alisse Portnoy’s Their Right To Speak is a fascinating book about women’s activism in campaigns against antebellum Native American removal and parallel efforts in the abolition movement.
In a passage on abolition and slavery rhetoric, Portnoy explains that “negro” was never a neutral term. In addition, “negro,” instead of the other nword, was used in all of her examples. Activist Lydia Maria Child already referred to the nword as a vulgar outcry in 1833. Portnoy shows how these terms only made sense when referring to slaves:
“They were "negroes”, a classification made possible only because slavery existed. In other words, millions of Africans and their descendants living in the United States were constituted for many white Americans from within, rather than external to or accidentally involved with, the institution of slavery. Simply, “negro” in the 1820s and 1830s meant more than “not white.” African Americans who lived in the northern states and colonists in Africa almost exclusively were called “free people of color,” whereas “negro” meant a particular group of people defined by their roles within the US slave culture. “Negro” was an attitude or state of being imposed by whites.“ (Portnoy 125)
Take that, Quentin Tarantino and your authenticity.
Portnoy, Alisse. Their Right to Speak. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005.
Thoughts?