Pickaninny

From Justapedia, unleashing the power of collective wisdom
(Redirected from Pickney)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is about the common Pidgin English word for a small child or racist caricature. For the mountain in California, see Pickaninny Buttes. For the impact structure in Western Australia, see Piccaninny crater.
Not to be confused with Picatinny, a US arms research base and a type of fitting for firearms.

Pickaninny (also picaninny, piccaninny or pickinninie) is a word applied originally by people of the West Indies to their babies and more widely referring to small children, as in Melanesian Pidgin. It is a pidgin word form, derived from the Portuguese pequenino ("very small",[1] a diminutive version of the word pequeno, 'small', also used in Spanish, spelled pequeñito or pequeñín).

In contrast to this neutral meaning, the word has been used in North America as a racial slur referring to a dark-skinned child of African descent. In modern sensibility, the term can refer to an archaic depiction or caricature used in a derogatory and racist sense.[2]

Usage

Pidgin usage

Together with several other Portuguese forms, pequeno and its diminutive pequenino have been widely adopted in many Pidgin or Creole languages, for 'child', 'small' and similar meanings. They are quite common in the creole languages of the Caribbean, especially those which are English-based. The Patois dialect of Jamaica, the word has been shortened to the form or pickney, which is used to describe a child regardless of racial origin, while in the English-based national creole language of Suriname, Sranang Tongo, pequeno has been borrowed as pikin for 'small' and 'child'.[3]

In the Pidgin English dialects of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon in western Africa, or pikin, or pekin – also derived from Portuguese – is used to describe a child.[citation needed] It can be heard in songs by African popular musicians such as Fela Kuti's Afrobeat song "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense"[4] and Prince Nico Mbarga's highlife song "Sweet Mother".[5] Both are from Nigeria.

The word pikinini is used in Tok Pisin, Solomon Pijin and Bislama (the English-based creole languages of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, respectively) the word for 'child' or 'children'.

North American usage

Reproduction of a tin sign from 1922 advertising Picaninny Freeze, a frozen treat

Although the Oxford English Dictionary quotes an example from 1653 of the word pickaninny used to describe a child,[6] it may also have been used in early African-American vernacular to indicate anything small, not necessarily a child. In a column in The Times of 1788, allegedly reporting a legal case in Philadelphia, a slave is charged with dishonestly handling goods he knows to be stolen and which he describes as insignificant, "only a piccaninny cork-screw and piccaninny knife – one cost six-pence and tudda a shilling". The anecdote goes on to make an anti-slavery moral however, when the black person challenges the whites for dishonestly handling stolen goods too – namely slaves – so it is perhaps more likely to be an invention than factual. The deliberate use of the word in this context however suggests it already had black-vernacular associations.[7] In 1826 an Englishman named Thomas Young was tried at the Old Bailey in London on a charge of enslaving and selling four Gabonese women known as "Nura, Piccaninni, Jumbo Jack and Prince Quarben".[8]

In the Southern United States, pickaninny was long used to refer to the children of African slaves or (later) of any dark-skinned African American. While this use of the term was popularized in reference to the character of Topsy in the 1852 book Uncle Tom's Cabin,[9] 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. According to the scholar Robin Bernstein, who describes the meaning in the context of the United States, the pickaninny is characterized by three qualities: "the figure is always juvenile, always of color, and always resistant if not immune to pain".[10][dubious – discuss]

Other

The term piccaninny was used in colonial Australia for an Aboriginal child and is still in use in some Indigenous Kriol languages.[11][12] The word piccaninny (sometimes spelled picanninnie) was also used in Australia during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its use is reflected in historic newspaper articles[citation needed] and numerous place names. Examples of the latter include Piccaninnie Ponds and Piccaninny Lake[13] in South Australia, Piccaninny crater and Picaninny Creek in Western Australia and Picaninny Point in Tasmania.[14]

The term was controversially used ("wide-grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell when he quoted a letter 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."[15] Before becoming the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote that "the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies." He later apologised for the article.[16][17]

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. See: Pickaninny (chess).

In popular culture

"Shake Yo' Dusters, or, Piccaninny Rag", sheet music of an 1898 song by William Krell.
Advertisement for the comedy short film The Pickaninny (1921) with Ernie Morrison aka "Sunshine Sammy."

Literature

  • 1911 – In the novel Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, the Indians of Neverland are members of the Piccaninny tribe. Sarah Laskow described them as "a blanket stand-in for "others" of all stripes, from Aboriginal populations in Australia to descendants of slaves in the United States" who generally communicate in pidgin with lines such as "Ugh, ugh, wah!".[18]
  • 1936 – In Margaret Mitchell's best-selling epic Gone with the Wind, Melanie Wilkes objects to her husband's intended move to New York City because it would mean that their son Beau would be educated alongside Yankees and pickaninnies.[19]

Television

  • 2015 - Season 1 Episode 14 of Shark Tank Australia featured Piccaninny Tiny Tots which has since changed its name to Kakadu Tiny Tots
  • 2020 - Episode 8 (Jig-A-Bobo) of the HBO television series Lovecraft Country features a character chased by Topsy and Bopsy, two ghoulish monsters depicted as "pickaninny" caricatures.[20][21]

News

  • 2002 - The Daily Telegraph - Boris Johnson referred to black people in Africa as "Piccanninies" with "Watermelon Smiles" in his Daily Telegraph article, published 10th January 2002. He went on to say “No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird.”[22]

Related terms

In Papua New Guinea, pikinini is not derogatory and is used in its original context as the word for child. Here local children are seen at Buk bilong Pikinini ("Books for Children") in Port Moresby, an independent not-for-profit organisation which aims to establish children's libraries and foster a love of reading and learning.

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.

The term pikinini is found in Melanesian pidgin and creole languages such as Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea or Bislama of Vanuatu, as the usual word for 'child' (of a person or animal);[23] it may refer to children of any race. For example, Charles III used the term in a speech he gave in Tok Pisin during a formal event: he described himself as nambawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin (i.e. the first child of the Queen).[24]

In certain dialects of Caribbean English, the words pickney and pickney-negger are used to refer to children. Also, in Nigerian as well as Cameroonian Pidgin English, the word pikin is used to mean a child.[25] And in Sierra Leone Krio[26] the term pikin refers to 'child' or 'children', while in Liberian English the term pekin does likewise. In Chilapalapa, a pidgin language used in Southern Africa, the term used is pikanin. In Sranan Tongo and Ndyuka of Suriname 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.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ "pickaninny". Oxford English Dictionary online (draft revision ed.). March 2010. Probably < a form in an [sic] Portuguese-based pidgin < Portuguese pequenino boy, child, use as noun of pequenino very small, tiny (14th cent.; earlier as pequeninno (13th cent.))...
  2. ^ Room, Adrian (1986). A dictionary of true etymologies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Inc. p. 130. ISBN 9780415030601.
  3. ^ Muysken, Pieter C.; Smith, Norval (2014). Surviving the Middle Passage: The West Africa–Surinam Sprachbund. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. p. 228. ISBN 978-3110343854.
  4. ^ "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense" Genius
  5. ^ Mbarga, Prince Nico & Rocafil Jazz (1976) Sweet Mother (lp) Rounder Records #5007 (38194)
  6. ^ "pickaninny". Oxford English Dictionary (draft revision ed.). March 2009. 1653 in N. & Q. (1905) 4th Ser. 10 129/1 Some women [in Barbados], whose pickaninnies are three yeares old, will, as they worke at weeding..suffer the hee Pickaninnie, to sit astride upon their backs.
  7. ^ "Black and White, A Modern Anecdote", The Times, 22 August 1788; Issue 1148; p. 4; col B.
  8. ^ The Times, 25 October 1826; Issue 13100; p. 3; col A, Admiralty Sessions, Old Bailey, 24 October.
  9. ^ Pilgrim, David (October 2000). "The Picaninny Caricature". Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Big Rapids, Michigan: Ferris State University. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  10. ^ Bernstein, Robin (2011). Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York: New York University Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780814787090.
  11. ^ "Last of the Tribe". National Museum of Australia.
  12. ^ Meakens, Felicity (2014). "Language contact varieties". In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (Eds.), the Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin: Mouton. Pp. 365-416: 367. Retrieved 28 March 2016.
  13. ^ "Piccaninny Lagoon, Lake". Location SA Map Viewer. Government of South Australia. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  14. ^ Maiden, Siobhan. "The Picaninny Point Debacle". ABC Australia. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  15. ^ Watkins, Ronald J. (1990). High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Term and Trials of Former Governor Evan Mecham. William Morrow & Co. pp. 72. ISBN 978-0-688-09051-7.
  16. ^ "Boris says sorry over 'blacks have lower IQs' article in the Spectator". Evening Standard. 2 April 2008. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  17. ^ Boris Johnson (10 January 2002). "If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 20 June 2008.
  18. ^ Laskow, Sarah. "The Racist History of Peter Pan's Indian Tribe". Smithsonian. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
  19. ^ "Gone with the Wind". gutenberg.net.au. Project Gutenburg. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
  20. ^ "How Lovecraft Country Uses Topsy and Bopsy to Address Racist Caricatures". Den of Geek. 7 October 2020.
  21. ^ "The Real History Behind The Terrifying Girls Haunting Dee On 'Lovecraft Country'". Bustle.
  22. ^ Johnson, Boris (18 June 2020). "If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there". The Telegraph – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  23. ^ Crowley, Terry. 2003. A new Bislama dictionary. Fiji: USP. ISBN 9789820203624. See entry "pikinini".
  24. ^ "Prince of Wales, 'nambawan pikinini', visits Papua New Guinea". The Daily Telegraph. 4 November 2012.
  25. ^ Faraclas, Nicholas G. (1996). Nigerian Pidgin. Routledge. p. 45. ISBN 0-415-02291-6 – via Google Books.
  26. ^ Cassidy, Frederic Gomes; Robert Brock le Page (2002). Dictionary of Jamaican English (2nd ed.). Barbados, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press. p. 502. ISBN 976-640-127-6 – via Google Books.

External links

Look up pickaninny in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pickaninny.
Retrieved from "https://justapedia.org/index.php?title=Pickaninny&oldid=1109289786"