zip coons

Noun

zip coon (plural zip coons)

1. (US, derogatory, ethnic, obsolete, offensive, slur) A black man.
   • Arter a while we got done—but it looked like I had bad luck for in sittin' down agin I lik'd to have sot on Barbry's tom cat, which if I had, I shoulder bin like Kurnel Zip Coon's wife who jump'd into a holler log to mash two young panters to deth, and they scratched her so bad she couldn t set...1858, Big Bear's Adventures and Travels, page 98
2. (dated, African-American Vernacular) A black person who accepts an inferior social status to white people.
   • There were many names for the coon stock character. He has been referred to as the urban zip coon, dancing dandy, and, most notably, Sambo, the happy slave.2006, Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media, page 26

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