red nigger

Noun

red nigger (plural red niggers)

1. (dated, derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) A Native American person.
   • His dark, sunburnt features flushed a deep red, as if all his blood had rushed to his face; while his eye wandered around the crowd, as if seeking a way to escape from so uncomfortable a situation. But finding himself completely hemmed in, and every eye fixed upon him, he said, as if with a...1852, Emerson Bennett, The Forest Rose; A Tale of the Frontier, Cincinnati: J. A. & U. P. James, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 66
   • At Crescent Lake in Oneida County, Hubert Locke, who is black and serves as the Dean of the University of Washington's School of Public Affairs, was confronted with words to the effect of, "Now the Commission has a nigger working for them" and "I guess there are two kinds of niggers—red niggers and...1988, James H. Schlender, quotee, “Written Testimony of James H. Schlender, Executive Administrator, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, May 18, 1988”, in Anti-Indian Violence: Hearings...

   Synonyms:

   prairie nigger, redskin, timber nigger, tree nigger

2. (Caribbean, ethnic, slur) A person of mixed Black and European descent.
   • A Trinidadian notes that 'today there are fewer and fewer "red niggers" and more and more Black men of light complexion, who have healed the psychological and moral gaps in their consciousness, and understood that their salvation and identity lie in their self-identification with the Black masses'.1972, David Lowenthal, West Indian Societies, London: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 287
   • I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, / I had a sound colonial education, / I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, / and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation1979, Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight”, in The Star-Apple Kingdom, 1st American edition, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, →LCCN, page 4

   Synonyms:

   chabin, mulatto