Niggerhead Mountain near Burnet, TX has been renamed. So have other mountains in California and elsewhere. The pejorative reference is not recent. It dates to a time when the word Nigger was a regular neutral noun in the American vernacular. Still used. It derives from the Latin word for black. It should be no more pejorative than the English word, black. I have lived long enough to have used Negro, colored, black, African-American, nigger, nigra, nigga, and ‘…my friend…’ I have read in American folk songs, ‘darky’, but never used it out of the songs. Surprised I was in 1960 to hear a black person refer to ‘honky’ as a pejorative for white people. I was called a ‘Pollock’ by a black employee who was enraged at his failure to be promoted. Honky was a pejorative for Hungarian.
Niggerhead Mountain near Burnet, TX has been renamed. So have other mountains in California and elsewhere. The pejorative reference is not recent. It dates to a time when the word Nigger was a regular neutral noun in the American vernacular. Still used. It derives from the Latin word for black. It should be no more pejorative than the English word, black. I have lived long enough to have used Negro, colored, black, African-American, nigger, nigra, nigga, and ‘…my friend…’ I have read in American folk songs, ‘darky’, but never used it out of the songs. Surprised I was in 1960 to hear a black person refer to ‘honky’ as a pejorative for white people. I was called a ‘Pollock’ by a black employee who was enraged at his failure to be promoted. Honky was a pejorative for Hungarian.