Pickaninny (also picaninny, piccaninny or pickininnie) is a
pidgin word for a small
child, possibly derived from the
Portuguesepequenino ('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, 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 and Britain, as well as aboriginal children of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.[3]
Pidgin languages
The term piccanin, derived from the 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 has been shortened to the form 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",[citation needed] while in the English-based national creole language of
Suriname,
Sranang Tongo, pequeno has been borrowed as pikin for 'small' and 'child'.[8]
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);[9] it may refer to children of any race.[citation needed] 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).[10]
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.[14] The term is now generally considered offensive in the U.S.[5][4]
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'".[15] These characters were a popular feature of
minstrel shows into the twentieth century.[4] According to historian
Robin Bernstein:
The pickaninny was an imagined, subhuman black juvenile who was typically depicted outdoors, merrily accepting (or even inviting) violence [...] Characteristics of the pickaninny include dark or sometimes jet-black skin, exaggerated eyes and mouth, the action of gorging (especially on watermelon), and the state of being threatened or attacked by animals (especially alligators, geese, dogs, pigs, or tigers). Pickaninnies often wear ragged clothes (which suggest parental neglect) and are sometimes partially or fully naked [...] the figure is always juvenile, always of color, and always resistant if not immune to pain.[3]
Journalist
H. L. Mencken (born 1880) wrote that "in the
Baltimore of my youth, pickaninny was not used invidiously, but rather affectionately."[16]
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.[citation needed] 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".[22][non-primary source needed]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.[17] It was controversially used ("wide-grinning picaninnies") by the British Conservative politician
Enoch Powell in his 1968 "
Rivers of Blood" speech.[citation needed] 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."[23][24][25]
1911 – In 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!".[26]
2015 – Season 1 Episode 14 of Shark Tank Australia featured Piccaninny Tiny Tots which has since changed its name to Kakadu Tiny Tots.[citation needed]
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.[28][29]
Tar-Baby – American Folklore character and metaphor
References
^"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.))...
^Room, Adrian (1986). A Dictionary of True Etymologies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Inc. p. 130.
ISBN978-0-415-03060-1.
^
abcBernstein, Robin (2011). "Tender Angels, Insensate Pickaninnies: The Divergent Paths of Racial Innocence". Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York University Press. pp. 34–35.
doi:
10.18574/nyu/9780814787090.003.0005.
ISBN978-0-8147-8709-0.
^
abHughes, Geoffrey (2015) [first published 2006]. An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World. London: Routledge. p. 345.
ISBN978-1-317-47678-8.
^"Pickaninny". WordReference.com Dictionary of English. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
^Muysken, Pieter C.; Smith, Norval (2014). Surviving the Middle Passage: The West Africa–Surinam Sprachbund. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. p. 228.
ISBN978-3-11-034385-4.
^Mencken, Henry Louis (1945). The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 635.
ISBN978-0-394-40076-1.
^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.
^"Piccaninny Lagoon, Lake". Location SA Map Viewer. Government of South Australia. Retrieved 17 January 2019.