Pickaninny (also picaninny, piccaninny or pickininnie) is a pidgin word for a small child, possibly derived from the Portuguese pequenino ('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]
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]
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]
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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 Nigerian as well as Cameroonian Pidgin English, the word pikin is used to mean a child.[11] It can be heard in songs by African popular musicians such as Fela Kuti's Afrobeat song "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense" and Prince Nico Mbarga's highlife song "Sweet Mother";[12][non-primary source needed] both are from Nigeria. In Sierra Leone Krio[13] the term pikin refers to 'child' or 'children', while in Liberian English the term pekin does likewise. In Chilapalapa, a pidgin language used in Southern Africa, the term used is pikanin. In Sranan Tongo and Ndyuka of Suriname the term pikin may refer to 'children' as well as to 'small' or 'little'. Some of these words may be more directly related to the Portuguese pequeno than to pequenino.[citation needed]
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]
Piccaninny, once an affectionate term for Aboriginal children[16] and, by extension, children generally,[17] is now considered an offensive term for an Aboriginal Australian child.[18] It was used in colonial Australia and is still in use in some Indigenous Kriol languages.[19][20] Piccaninny (sometimes spelled picanninnie) is found in numerous Australian place names, such as Piccaninnie Ponds and Piccaninny Lake[21] in South Australia, Piccaninny crater and Picaninny Creek in Western Australia and Picaninny Point in Tasmania.[22][original research?]
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".[23][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.[18] 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."[24][25][26]
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