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 the term nigger, an ethnic slur used against black people. Although the two words are etymologically unrelated, niggard is nonetheless often replaced with a synonym. People have faced misplaced backlash for using the word.
Niggard, arising in the Middle Ages, long predates nigger, which arose in the 18th century.
Etymology
Niggardly (noun: niggard) is an adjective meaning 'stingy' or 'miserly'. Niggard (14th C) is derived from the Middle English word meaning 'stingy,' , which is probably derived from two other words also meaning 'stingy,' Old Norse and Old English . The word niggle, which in modern usage means to give excessive attention to minor details, probably shares an etymology with niggardly.
Nigger, a racial slur widely considered to be offensive, derives from the Spanish word Negro, meaning 'black', and the French word . Both and (and therefore also and nigger) ultimately come from the Latin adjective , 'black' or 'dark'. The first recorded use of nigger dates to 1574, and its first recorded derogatory use to 1775. Plays on the similarity of the two words date back at least a century, one example being a piece of sheet music from 1900.
David Howard incident
thumb|"The Niggardly Nigger", a [[coon song from 1900.]]
On January 15, 1999, David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony A. Williams, used "niggardly" in reference to a budget. This upset one of his black colleagues, who misinterpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25, Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.
After public pressure, an internal review into the matter was brought about, and the mayor offered Howard the chance to return to his position at the Office of the Public Advocate on February 4. Howard refused but accepted another position with the mayor instead, insisting that he did not feel victimized by the incident. On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. "I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind; that's naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person [can] afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does."
It had been speculated that this incident inspired Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, though Roth has stated that his source was an incident in the career of sociologist and professor Melvin Tumin.
Public response
The Howard incident led to a national debate in the U.S., in the context of racial sensitivity and political correctness, on whether use of niggardly should be avoided. As James Poniewozik wrote in Salon, the controversy was "an issue that opinion-makers right, left and center could universally agree on." He wrote that "the defenders of the dictionary" were "legion, and still queued up six abreast". Julian Bond, then chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, deplored the offense that had been taken at Howard's use of the word. "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding", he said. 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.
University of Wisconsin–Madison incident
Shortly after the David Howard incident in Washington D.C., another controversy erupted over the use of the word at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 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. She later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C. controversy that had come to light the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."
The student's plea, offered as evidence in support of the school's speech code, instead struck an unintended chord helping to destroy it. "Many 'abolitionists', as they now were called, believe that [the student's] speech, widely reported, was the turning point," according to an article in Reason magazine. An editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal addressed the student who complained, saying: "Thank you [...] for clarifying precisely why the UW–Madison does not need an academic speech code. [...] Speech codes have a chilling effect on academic freedom and they reinforce defensiveness among students who ought to be more open to learning." The teacher, Stephanie Bell, said she used "niggardly" during a discussion about literary characters. Parent Akwana Walker, who is black, protested the use of the word, saying it offended her. 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. As a result of this smear campaign, he was pressured to resign from his paid position as lead negotiator for the district's teachers' union. A Mendocino County Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of the school district, despite the assistant superintendent who authored the memo claiming in court that he knew the meaning of the word.
Other complaints
Letter to The Economist, 1995
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. in the United States, productivity growth averaged a niggardly 0.8% a year." The Economist later pointed out with amusement that it received a letter from a reader in Boston who thought the word "niggardly" was inappropriate. "Why do we get such letters only from America?" the magazine commented.
Dallas Morning News
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 raised complaints.