I'm curious about the now forbidden use of the term "(the N-word)-rigging", used in the context of jury-rigging. Is it something that's a holdover from the slave and afterward days in the South, or was it used all over the country? I live in Texas, but when I lived in Washington, D.C. for 9 years, I never heard this term used. Of course, that was in the early '80s, and the use of the N-word was becoming verboten at that time. Was it something said in the south predominately, or was it nationwide? Is (was) the term used in any other countries, or only here, or only in the south?
I have lived in The Philadelphia/New York area with some years spent in New Hampshire. I was born in the fifties. I never heard the expression as you refer to it. I do remember hearing "jerry-rig," or "jury-rig" quite often since my early years.
I remember hearing that in the Midwest (Iowa) when I was young. Although it was replaced by jerry-rigging rather than jury-riging. I also remember briefly hearing 'African engineered' as a sort of jocular replacement for it before jerry-rigging took over.
heathbug said:
Of course, that was in the early '80s, and the use of the N-word was becoming verboten at that time.
The “n word†wasn't already verboten? Well, I suppose that it was probably more verboten in some places than in others.
I can't help notice that other replies have shied away from the real question, because it is a hot-button (racial) issue.
Of course, in those benighted days of yore, juries were overwhelmingly white — a franchise linked to property ownership or other status symbols — and if enough of the panel were prejudiced (as often was the case), no black defendant could possibly get a fair trial. And frequently didn't.
N****r-rigging would be a pejorative applied by prejudiced whites — I don't know where it started, but I can imagine it would spread — who imagine that “fair†trials with integrated (or black-heavy) panels would only allow (presumably guilty) black defendants free — and they would ALL be presumed guilty, Constitutional guarantees notwithstanding.
I see no reason to assume it originated in the South -- us Northerners have had our less-than-stellar moments in race relations as well.