Pickaninny Explained

Pickaninny (also picaninny, piccaninny or pickininnie) is a pidgin word for a small child, possibly derived from the Portuguese Portuguese: pequenino ('boy, child, very small, tiny').^[1] It has been used as a racial slur for African American children and a pejorative term for Aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It can also refer to a derogatory caricature of a dark-skinned child of African descent.^[2]

Origins and usage

The origins of the word pickaninny (and its alternative spellings picaninny and piccaninny) are disputed; it may derive from the Portuguese term for a small child, Portuguese: pequenino.^[3] It was apparently used in the seventeenth century by slaves in the West Indies to affectionately refer to a child of any race.^[4] Pickaninny acquired a pejorative connotation by the nineteenth century as a term for black children in the United States, as well as aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.

Similar terms in Pidgin and Creole languages

The term piccanin, derived from the Portuguese Portuguese: pequenino, has along with several variants become widely used in pidgin languages, meaning 'small'.^[5] This term is common in the creole languages of the Caribbean, especially those which are English-based.^[6] In Jamaican Patois, the word is found as pickney, which is used to describe a child regardless of racial origin.^[7] The same word is used in Antiguan and Barbudan Creole to mean "children", while in the English-based national creole language of Suriname, Sranang Tongo, Portuguese: pequeno has been borrowed as Sranan Tongo: pikin for 'small' and 'child'.^[8]

The term Tok Pisin: 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);^[9] 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 Tok Pisin: nambawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin (i.e. the first child of the Queen).^[10]

In Nigerian as well as Cameroonian Pidgin English, the word pikin is used to mean a child.^[11] It can be heard in songs by African popular musicians such as Fela Kuti's Afrobeat song "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense" and Prince Nico Mbarga's highlife song "Sweet Mother";^[12] both are from Nigeria. In Sierra Leone Krio^[13] 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 Portuguese: pequeno than to Portuguese: pequenino.

United States

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. The term is now generally considered offensive in the U.S.

The character of Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin became the basis for the popular caricature of the pickaninny, described by scholar Debbie Olson as "a coon character [...] untamed, genderless, with wide eyes, hair sticking up all around the child's head, and often 'stuffing their wide mouths with watermelon or chicken.^[14] These characters were a popular feature of minstrel shows into the twentieth century. According to historian Robin Bernstein:

During the American Civil War, according to a biography of Union General Benjamin Butler, when New Orleans, under General Butler, was subject to martial law, "More and more New Orleans families who had stood high in the social life of the city suffered not only loss of property but the humiliation of seeing their ex-servants diaper pickaninnies in their heirloom laces".^[15]

Journalist H. L. Mencken (born 1880) wrote that "in the Baltimore of my youth, pickaninny was not used invidiously, but rather affectionately."^[16]

Commonwealth countries

Piccaninny is considered an offensive term for an Aboriginal Australian child.^[17] It was used in colonial Australia and is still in use in some Indigenous Kriol languages.^{[18] [19]} Piccaninny (sometimes spelled picanninnie) is found in numerous Australian place names, such as Piccaninnie Ponds and Piccaninny Lake^[20] in South Australia, Piccaninny crater and Picaninny Creek in Western Australia and Picaninny Point in Tasmania.^[21]

The term was used in 1831 in an anti-slavery tract "The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, related by herself" published in Edinburgh, Scotland.^[22] 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".^[23] The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English says that in the United Kingdom today, piccaninny is considered highly offensive and derogatory, or negative and judgemental when used by other black people. It was controversially used ("wide-grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician Enoch Powell in his 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech. In a 2002 column for The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote, "It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies."^{[24] [25] [26]}

In popular culture

Literature

• 1911In the novel Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, the Indians of Neverland are members of the Piccaninny tribe. Writer Sarah Laskow describes 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!".^[27]
• 1936In Margaret Mitchell's best-selling epic Gone with the Wind, the character 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".^[28]

Television

• 2015Season 1 Episode 14 of Shark Tank Australia featured Piccaninny Tiny Tots which has since changed its name to Kakadu Tiny Tots.
• 2020Episode 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.^{[29] [30]}

Further reading

• Piccaninny . x.
• Web site: The Picaninny Caricature . Pilgrim . David . October 2000 . Ferris State University . Big Rapids, Mich. . Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia .

External links

• • • Online exhibit of stereotypical portrayals of African Americans, Haverford College

Notes and References

1. Encyclopedia: Oxford English Dictionary online . pickaninny . draft revision . March 2010 . Probably < a form in an Portuguese-based pidgin < Portuguese Portuguese: pequenino boy, child, use as noun of Portuguese: pequenino very small, tiny (14th cent.; earlier as pequeninno (13th cent.))....
2. Encyclopedia: Room . Adrian . A Dictionary of True Etymologies . London . Routledge and Kegan Paul Inc. . 1986 . 130 . 978-0-415-03060-1.
3. Book: Bernstein, Robin . Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights . New York University Press . 2011 . 34–35 . 978-0-8147-8709-0 . 10.18574/nyu/9780814787090.003.0005 . Tender Angels, Insensate Pickaninnies: The Divergent Paths of Racial Innocence.
4. Book: Herbst . Philip . The Color of Words: An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Ethnic Bias in the United States . 1997 . Intercultural Press . Yarmouth, Maine . 978-1-877864-42-1 . 178–179 . registration.
5. Book: Hughes . Geoffrey . An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World . 2015 . first published 2006 . Routledge . London . 345 . 978-1-317-47678-8.
6. Web site: Pickaninny . WordReference.com Dictionary of English . 31 December 2022.
7. Web site: Pickney Patois Definition on Jamaican Patwah . Jamaican Patwah . 8 July 2023 . en.
8. Book: Muysken . Pieter C. . Smith . Norval . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co . 2014 . 978-3-11-034385-4 . 228.
9. Book: Crowley . Terry . Terry Crowley (linguist) . A New Bislama Dictionary . 2003 . Institute of Pacific Studies . Suva, Fiji . 978-9-8202-0362-4 . 205 . 2nd.
10. News: . Prince of Wales, 'nambawan pikinini', visits Papua New Guinea . The Daily Telegraph . 4 November 2012 . subscription.
11. Book: Faraclas, Nicholas G. . Nigerian Pidgin . 45 . Routledge . 1996 . 0-415-02291-6 .
12. [Prince Nico Mbarga|Mbarga, Prince Nico & Rocafil Jazz]
13. Book: Cassidy . Frederic Gomes . Le Page, Robert Brock . Dictionary of Jamaican English . 502 . 2nd . Kingston, Jamaica . University of the West Indies Press . 2002 . 976-640-127-6 . registration.
14. Book: Olson . Debbie . Black Children in Hollywood Cinema . 2017 . Palgrave Macmillan . Cham, Switzerland . 978-3-319-48273-6 . 83 . 10.1007/978-3-319-48273-6_3 . African American Girls in Hollywood Cinema.
15. West, Jr., Richard S., Lincoln's Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin Butler, 1818-1893, Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965, p. 156.
16. Book: Mencken . Henry Louis . The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States . 1945 . Alfred A. Knopf . New York . 978-0-394-40076-1 . 635.
17. Book: Partridge, Eric . Dalzell, Tom . Victor, Terry . 2006 . The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Volume II: J–Z . Routledge . London . 978-0-415-25938-5 . 1473 . registration.
18. Web site: Last of the Tribe . National Museum of Australia.
19. Meakens . Felicity . Language contact varieties . In Harold Koch & Rachel Nordlinger (Eds.), the Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin: Mouton. Pp. 365-416 . 2014 . 367 . 28 March 2016.
20. Web site: Piccaninny Lagoon, Lake . Location SA Map Viewer . Government of South Australia . 17 January 2019.
21. News: The Picaninny Point Debacle . Maiden . Siobhan . 24 December 2022 . ABC Australia . 23 June 2009.
22. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/prince/prince.html Documenting the American South
23. The Times, 25 October 1826; Issue 13100; p. 3; col A, Admiralty Sessions, Old Bailey, 24 October.
24. Book: Brown . Alexander . An Ethics of Political Communication . 2021 . Routledge . 978-1-0004-4122-2 . 10.4324/9781003207832-3 . Stonewalling . 92–131 . 242520414.
25. News: Bowcott . Owen . Jones . Sam . Johnson's 'piccaninnies' apology . The Guardian . 23 January 2008.
26. News: If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there. The Daily Telegraph . Johnson, Boris . 10 January 2002 . unfit . https://web.archive.org/web/20080620103008/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/01/10/do1002.xml . 20 June 2008 .
27. Web site: Laskow . Sarah . December 2, 2014 . The Racist History of Peter Pan's Indian Tribe . Smithsonian . 20 December 2022 . en.
28. Web site: Gone with the Wind . Gutenberg.net.au . Project Gutenberg . 22 March 2020.
29. Web site: Hill . Nicole . How Lovecraft Country Uses Topsy and Bopsy to Address Racist Caricatures . 7 October 2020 . Den of Geek.
30. Web site: Smail . Gretchen . October 4, 2020 . The Real History Behind The Terrifying Girls Haunting Dee On 'Lovecraft Country' . Bustle.