Controversies about the word niggardly
In the United States, there have been several controversies involving the misunderstanding of the word niggardly, an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly", because of its phonetic similarity to nigger, an ethnic slur used against black people.
[2] The word niggle, which in modern usage means to give excessive attention to minor details, probably shares an etymology with niggardly.
[14] Bond also said, "Seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on the issue" and that as a nation the US has a "hair-trigger sensibility" on race that can be tripped by both real and false grievances.
At a February 1999 meeting of the Faculty Senate, Amelia Rideau, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union, told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly.
"[16] The student's plea, offered as evidence in support of the school's speech code, instead struck an unintended chord helping to destroy it.
"[16] In late January or early February 2002, a white fourth-grade teacher in Wilmington, North Carolina, was formally reprimanded for teaching the word and told to attend sensitivity training.
Norm Shearin, the deputy superintendent of schools for the district, said the teacher made a bad decision by teaching the word because it was inappropriate for that grade level.
Boaz, who was bargaining for Ukiah schoolteachers, wrote a letter saying that the "tenor of the negotiation tactics of the district office has become increasingly negative and niggardly."
The response was a memo from one defendant of the lawsuit that implied that Boaz was racist, and a letter cosigned by the other defendant and nine other individuals in the Mendocino County school system stating that Boaz's comments were "racially charged and show a complete lack of respect and integrity toward Dr. Nash, Ukiah Unified District Superintendent," who is a black woman.
[19] In 1995, London-based newspaper, The Economist, used the word "niggardly" in an article about the impact of computers and productivity: "During the 1980s, when service industries consumed about 85% of the $1 trillion invested in I.T.
[20] At some point before the Washington, D.C., incident (of early 1999), The Dallas Morning News had banned the use of the word after its use in a restaurant review had raised complaints.
A substance-abuse client filed a complaint saying a counsellor called him "niggardly dumb" in a June meeting with two workers at a county rehab center.
In an investigative report, the county's professional standards office found the workers, who are both white, engaged in "unprofessional, unethical and discriminatory" behavior.
[24] The public controversies caused some commentators to speculate that "niggardly" would be used more often, both in its correct sense and as fodder for humor, as a racist code word by euphemism similar to a minced oath, or both.
[20] Shortly after the Washington, D.C., incident, James Poniewozik wrote in his column at Slate online magazine that some were already using "niggardly" in a way that made their motives ambiguous.
He quoted a posting by a user from a reader forum on the website of The New York Times, "who just happened to use 'niggardly'—linguistically correctly" in commenting on two witnesses to a Congressional investigation:[13] B. Curry [sic] got a pc pass because her testimony like that of all Clintonistas was niggardly with the truth.
