N23.Berlin

niger / the river niger / the stage nigeria

Have you read the children’s book „Uncle Tom’s Cabin“?

In the children’s book „Uncle Tom’s Cabin“ by Harriet Beecher-Stowe, as befits a novel, there are both truths and lies. Unfortunately, they do not notice small children. The lies we’ve all read in kid books don’t come to us until we are adults. On the tour, one can and has always been able to convey ideology to entire generations of children and adolescents.

The most important lie in the book is the claim that the word „nigger“ is a dirty word. According to wikipedia, Mrs. Beecher-Stowe comes from a Protestant pastor’s family and should actually master the Latin language. I myself noticed this only a few years ago, but the Latin word „niger“ translates into English as „black and dark“ and that’s how the blacks of America still call themselves today.

The continent of Africa was explored and surveyed in the past by white educated people of the upper class and geographical names for rivers were assigned. The river Niger, is therefore only called dark river. Mrs. Beecher-Stowe seems to have deliberately written down a lie when she misspelled the word niger with double gg. In the German language we also have some problems with the pronunciation of the words Niger for the river, since the word is written with a so-called short „i“ while there is still the long „ie“. Many people pronounce the name for the Niger River with a long „ie“.

If the slave owner in the USA belonged to the financial and intellectual upper class, then he had learned the foreign language „Latin“ in his youth and he called the black slave, „black“ in Latin = niger.
There is no word „nigger.“ It’s a made-up word. A dialect written down like Bavarian or Säschsisch. If the novelist had remained factual, she should have noticed that the term „Black Tom“ is not an insult, but a fact. It is also not an insult to say „white woman or man X or Y“ to a person of white skin.

Me and many others with me, we were lied to from the beginning. The adults say, „Well, a novel is like a feature film a la „Independence Day“, fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm, just fantasy, the book does not claim to be a factual documentary.“