misogynoir

2 June 2021

Misogynoir was coined in 2010 by Black feminist scholar and activist Moya Bailey as a term for misogyny that is unique to or specifically directed at Black women. The word is an English-French blend of misogyn[y] + noir (black).

In a 14 March 2010 article for the Crunk Feminist Collective Bailey wrote:

My reorientation to the misogynoir* ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that “All the Way Turnt Up” was a great song because it didn’t objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric “three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow.”

And her note reads:

Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.

A somewhat more precise and expansive definition was given by Tamura Lomax in her 2018 book Jezebel Unhinged:

“Misogynoir,” a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, highlights the intersectionality and particularity of oppressive structures, forces, and ideas that are race-, sex-, gender-, and class-specific. It gives voice to an explicit brand of misogyny that overwhelmingly and intentionally attacks black women and girls.

Also, in 2018 Bailey commented on why she coined the word, giving examples of misogynoir, and noting that misogynoir not only comes from white men but rather is systemic, coming from Black men and even from feminists too:

I had concerns about the ways cis and trans Black women are represented in contemporary media. I was troubled by the way straight Black men talked about Black women online and in music. It seemed that straight Black men were always instructing Black women about what to do with their bodies. So much of what was presented as the ways Black men and women relate to each other was an assumed heterosexual cis desire, and about how Black women were failing at being desirable. For me, naming misogynoir was about noting both an historical anti-Black misogyny and a problematic intraracial gender dynamic that had wider implications in popular culture. Misogynoir can come from Black men, white men and women, and even other Black women. The Onion “jokingly” calling Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt, or the way that Raven-Symoné dismissed Black girls with “ghetto names,” or even the way white feminist writers tried to frame Nicki Minaj’s rightful call out of industry inequities, Black women and girls are being treated in a uniquely terrible way because of how societal ideas about race and gender intersect.

Since its coining, other writers have sometimes expanded the definition of misogynoir to include women of color generally. But Bailey is on the record as objecting to this more general definition, contending that it is important that “the term is used to describe the unique ways in which Black women are pathologized in popular culture.” While coiners of words do not have control over how those words are used and changed, she does have a valid point in that the experience of Black women is very often not the same as that of other women of color and that misogynoir is a more valuable term when its use is restricted to the context of Black women and girls.

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Sources:

Bailey, Moya. “They Aren’t Talking About Me...” Crunk Feminist Collective, 14 March 2010.

Bailey, Moya and Trudy. “On Misogynoir: Citation, Erasure, and Plagiarism.” Feminist Media Studies, 18.4, 2018, 762–68. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395.  

Lomax, Tamura. Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture. Durham, North Carolina: Duke UP, 2018, 213. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Tennessee

Detail from “A Draught of the Cherokee Country,” by Henry Timberlake, 1765, showing the village and river named Tennessee

1 June 2021

Tennessee, the name of a river and of the state, is taken from the name of a Cherokee (Iroquoian) village, tă´năsī´ or tănsĭ´, that was located along what is now called the Little Tennessee River. The meaning and etymology of the Cherokee word is unknown. Various speculations about the name’s meaning have been put forth, none with solid evidence behind them. But it is likely that the Cherokee village is the namesake of an older Coosa village located near the junction of the French Broad River and the Pigeon River in what is now eastern Tennessee

Spanish explorer Juan Pardo encountered that Coosa village on 6 October 1567. From the journal of Juan de la Bandera, a member of his expedition recorded its name as Tanasqui:

Despues desto En presencia de mi El dho Juan de la vandera escrivano El dho señor capitan Juan pardo prosiguiendo la dha jornada En seis dias del dho mes de otubre del dho año de mill E quinientos y sesenta E siete años llego a un lugar que se disze tanasqui El qual Estaba situado En cierta parte de tierra fuerte a manera de ysla zercada de agua.

(After this in the presence of me, Juan de la Bandera, notary, the captain, Juan Pardo, continuing the journey on the sixth day of the month of October, 1567, arrived at a place which is called Tanasqui, which was situated on a certain piece of solid ground, like an island surrounded by water.)

English use of the name likely dates to the early eighteenth century, but I haven’t found any examples prior to 1765, when it appears in the memoirs of Henry Timberlake, a British officer who fought in the Anglo-Cherokee and French and Indian (Seven Years) Wars. In the “Draught of the Cherokee Country” map that accompanies his memoir, Timberlake records the name of the Cherokee village and river as Tennessee. And in the memoirs themselves, he records this event from December 1761, at the end of the Anglo-Cherokee War:

Next morning we had the pleasure of finding the ice entirely gone, thawed, probably, by a hard rain that fell over-night, so that about two o'clock we found ourselves in Broad River, which being very high, we went the two following days at the rate of ten miles an hour, till we came within a mile of Tennessee river, when, running under the shore, we on a sudden discovered a party of ten or twelve Indians, standing with their pieces presented on the bank. Finding it impossible to resist or escape, we ran the canoe ashore towards them, thinking it more eligible to surrender immediately, which might entitle us to better treatment, than resist or fly, in either of which death seemed inevitable, from their presented guns, or, their pursuit. We now imagined our death, or, what was worse, a miserable captivity, almost certain, when the headman of the party agreeably surprized us, by asking, in the Cherokee language, to what town we belonged? To which our interpreter replied, To the English camp; that the English and Cherokees having made a peace, I was then carrying the articles to their countrymen. On this the old warrior, commonly called the Slave Catcher of Tennessee, invited us to his camp, treated us with dried venison, homminy, and boiled corn.

In the 1790s, the then Southwest Territory of the United States began pushing for statehood, and in 1796 the territory created a constitution under the name Tennessee. As recorded in the American Minerva of 9 March 1796:

The convention of the South Western Territory have formed a constitution for that District which has received the name of TENNESSEE.

Tennessee became the sixteenth state to join the union on 1 June 1796.

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Sources:

American Minerva (New York), 9 March 1796, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Hudson, Charles. The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566–68. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990, 36, 220, 267. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Timberlake, Henry. The Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake. London: 1765, 27–28. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Vogel, Virgil J. Indian Place Names in Illinois. Illinois State Historical Society, Pamphlet Series No. 4. Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1963, 146–147. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Image credit: Henry Timberlake, Memoirs (1765). Public domain image.

Kentucky

Detail of a 1755 map showing the Kentucke River

1 June 2021

Kentucky is another of those North American place names that comes from an indigenous word but which word and what it means is uncertain. There seem to be two leading possibilities. The first is that it was the name of a Shawnee (Algonquian) village in what is now Clark County, Kentucky, Eskippakithiki. The second is that it is a Wyandot (Iroquoian) word meaning “plain, meadowland.” The Wyandot word in question was likely similar to the Seneca (another Iroquoian language) gȩdá’geh, pronounced /kẽtaʔkeh/ and meaning “at the field.”

The earliest English-language use of Kentucky that I have found hints at the Shawnee origin, although it places the location at some distance from the Shawnee settlement. From the Pennsylvania Gazette, 10 May 1753:

By Letters from Virginia, dated the 10th of April, we have the following Advice, viz. “That an armed Company of Indians, consisting of Ottowawas, and Connywagas, headed by one of the Six Nations, and a white Man, met with some Pennsylvania Traders, at a place called Kentucky, about 150 Miles from the Shawnese Town, on this side of the Allegheny River, and took eight Prisoners, five belonging to Mr. Groghan, the other three to Mr. Lowry, and with them Goods to the Value of upwards of Three Hundred Pounds.

Kentucky is also the name of a river, and this is first recorded in English in 1755 in a description and map of the middle British colonies by Lewis Evans and published by Benjamin Franklin:

KENTUCKE || is larger than the foregoing, has high Clay Banks, abounds in Cane and Buffaloes, and has also some very large Salt Springs. It has no Limestone yet discovered, but some other fit for building. Its Navigation is interrupted with some Shoals, but passable with Canoes to the Gap, where the War Path goes through the Ouasioto Mountain. This Gap § I point out in the Map, as a very important Pass; and it is truly so, by Reason of its being the only Way passable with Horses from Ohio Southward for 3 or 400 Miles Extent. And if the Government has a Mind to preserve the Country back of Carolina, it should be looked to in Time.

We get references to Kentucky as a place settled by white people by 1776. A notice placed in the Virginia Gazette on 23 August 1776 says the following:

KENTUCK, August 21, 1776.
WHEREAS, in consequence of an agreement made between myself and mr. John Floyd of this settlement, about a piece of land, I gave the said Floyd my bond for 20 l. I therefore give this publick notice, that I will not pay but half the same, and that whoever may take an assignment of the said bond for more than 10 l. will certainly be disappointed of their expectations therein.
                        1 ||        JOHN MAXWELL.

Kentucky was incorporated as a county of Virginia in December 1776. Petitions for statehood began in 1778, and on 1 June 1792 Kentucky became the fifteenth state of the United States.

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Sources:

Advertisement, Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), 23 August 1776, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Evans, Lewis. Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays. The First Containing an Analysis of a General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America. Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1755, 29, 37. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

McCafferty, Michael. Native American Place Names of Indiana. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2008, 250. Google Books.

“Philadelphia, May 10.” Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), 10 May 1753, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Lewis Evans, 1755, Map of the Middle British Colonies in North America. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

woke

A 7 July 2016 protest over the police shooting of Philando Castile, a Black man, during a routine traffic stop the previous day. Two women among a crowd of protesters hold up a sign that reads “#JusticeForPhilando” and has an image of a fist rising out the state of Minnesota.

31 May 2021

Woke is an adjective, originating in Black slang, meaning being alert to racism and racial discrimination. It has been circulating for decades, but in recent years it has been taken up by white speakers, and the contexts in which it is used has expanded to other areas of injustice and discrimination. This adjectival use of woke is clearly documented from the early 1960s, but it is possible that it is older in oral use.

The adjective comes, of course, from the past participle of the verb to wake. The verb can be traced back to the Old English verb wæcnan. Originally in Black English, the adjective was used literally, to mean awake, as opposed to being asleep. The earliest example I can find is in the 1891 Joel Chandler Harris’s short story “Balaam and His Master”:

An’ den, when I git my belly full, I sot in de sun an’ went right fast ter sleep. I ’spec’ I tuck a right smart nap, kaze when some un hollered at me an’ woke me up de sun wuz gwine down de hill right smartly. I jumped up on my feet, I did, an’ I say, ‘Who dat callin’ me?’ Somebody ’low, ‘Yo’marster want you.’ Den I bawl out, ‘Is Marse Berry come?’ De n[——]s all laugh, an’ one un ‘em say, Dat n[——] man dreamin’, mon. He ain’t woke good yit.’

Harris was, of course, white and recording/imitating Black speech. I cannot find an early example by a Black writer. The search is complicated because relatively few outlets of the day published Black slang, and sifting out the slang adjectival uses from the much more common uses of the verb is an almost hopeless task.

This literal sense of the adjective woke appears in a 19 April 1928 piece syndicated to white newspapers. Its inclusion in a gossip column about the goings-on in Manhattan is, perhaps, intended to make fun of Black dialect. The usage is literal in that the event goes on all night long and the attendees literally stay awake, but one wonders if it also reflects a metaphorical sense that may have been current in slang at the time:

The Harlem Black Belt this week offered gaudy posters reading: The Stay Woke Ball—open from 5 o'clock p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning.

The transition from the literal to the metaphorical meaning can be seen in this 13 March 1943 article in the Norfolk Journal and Guide that quotes Black writer and educator J. Saunders Redding. Redding’s use here is a deliberate metaphor, likening becoming aware of racism and white supremacy to that of waking from sleep. Again, this is not quite the adjectival use, but it is either a precursor to that or Redding could be reflecting an existing slang usage in more a formal style:

These lessons mean that the Negro is coming to have “a faith in organized labor as a force for social justice. They mean what a United Mine Workers official in West Virginia told me in 1940: Let me tell you buddy, Waking up is a damn sight harder than going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer,” he said.

Clear use of the metaphorical woke itself is recorded by Black novelist William Melvin Kelley in the New York Times on 20 May 1962. Kelley wrote an article on Black slang with the title “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” Accompanying the article is a short glossary of slang terms that includes this entry:

woke (adj.): well-informed, up-to-date (“Man, I’m woke”).

Kelley didn’t explicitly define woke in terms of injustice or racism, but one can certainly infer that is the intended context.

Ten years later, the connection of woke to racial injustice is clear when Black playwright Barry Beckham includes this line in the prologue to his 1972 play Garvey Lives!:

I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up other black folk.

Woke moves out of the province of American Black speech and starts appearing with great frequency in English-language publications around 2015. And it is around this time that the word starts being used in contexts other than racism in the United States. For example, this passage appears in the South African Mail & Guardian Thought Leader in a 23 October 2015 article about women protesting increases in university tuition and fees:

This time around women are woke to this (as the cool kids say) and refuse to be silenced, refuse history to repeat itself. At Wits women who were told they could not lead the songs, went and sang their own. And online, women were challenging the “behind-the-scenes” narrative with hashtags such as #MbokodoLead.

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Sources:

“Deep Changes in Thinking Bringing Dread to White South—Redding.” Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia), 13 March 1943, A9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. woke, adj.

Harris, Joel Chandler. “Balaam and His Master.” Balaam and His Master and Other Sketches and Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891, 34. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Kelley, William Melvin. “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” New York Times Magazine, 20 May 1962, SM45. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “‘Saying Something Lexicon.’” New York Times Magazine, 20 May 1962, SM45. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

McIntyre, O.O. “New York Day By Day.” Portsmouth Daily Times, 19 April 1928, 20. NewspaperArchive.com.

Mugo, Kagure. “#FeesMustFall: You Cannot Ask Women to Be Vocal in Public and Silent in Private.” Mail & Guardian Thought Leader, 23 October 2015.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2019, s.v. woke, adj.2.

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue, 2016. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Wisconsin

Detail of a c.1819 map of the Northwest Territory (i.e., what is now the state of Wisconsin) showing the Ouisconsin River

28 May 2021

[Edit, 9 June 2021: corrected a fact regarding Marquette’s death.]

The origin of the name Wisconsin is a mystery. Not only is its original meaning uncertain—a rather common occurrence with indigenous placenames—but which language it comes from is also in doubt—all a result of the casual disregard that early European explorers and colonists had for indigenous languages.

We do know that the name was first applied to the Wisconsin River. Many sources point to an Ojibwa (Chippewa) origin, but Michael McCafferty contends that the name is from the Miami-Illinois meeskohsinki meaning “it lies red,” probably a reference to the red sandstone banks along portions of the river. Other hypotheses about the original meaning include “gathering place of the waters.”

The first Europeans to record the name were Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet in 1673. A translation of their travel narrative from the French reads:

The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing. It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that render its navigation very difficult. It is full of islands covered with vines. On the banks one sees fertile land, diversified with woods, prairies, and hills. There are oak, walnut, and basswood trees; and another kind, whose branches are armed with long thorns. We saw there neither feathered game nor fish, but many deer, and a large number of cattle.

Marquette died before he could return to Quebec, but Jolliet took the name Meskousing back with him. There René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle mistook Marquette’s and Jolliet’s <M> to be an <Ou> and rendered the name as Ouisconsing. Others followed Cavelier’s lead. That spelling was later Anglicized to <W> and the final <g> dropped.

The name appears in English by 1698 in Louis Hennepin’s A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America:

No Rivers, as I have already said, run into the Meschasipi between the river of the Illinois and the Fall of St. Anthony, from the Westward, but the River Ottenta, and another which falls into it within eight Leagues of the said Fall: But on the Eastward we met with a pretty large River, call'd Ouisconsin or Misconsin, which comes from the Northward. This River is near as large as that of the Illinois; but I cannot give an exact account of the length of its Course, for we left it about sixty Leagues from its Mouth, to make a Portage into another River, which runs into the Bay of Puans, as I shall observe when I come to speak of our return from Issati into Canada. This River Ouisconsin runs into the Meschasipi about 100 Leagues above that of the Illinois.

The area that would become the state of Wisconsin was acquired by the United States by the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. The area was called by various names until the Wisconsin Territory was created in 1836. Wisconsin was admitted to the Union on 39 May 1848.

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Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Hennepin, Louis. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America Extending Above Four Thousand Miles Between New France and New Mexico. London: Printed for M. Bentley, et al., 1698, 180–181. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Marquette, Jacques and Louis Jolliet. “The Mississippi Voyage of Jolliet and Marquette, 1673.” Early Narratives of the Northwest, 1634–1699. Louise Phelps Kellogg, ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917, 235–36.

McCafferty, Michael. Native American Place-Names of Indiana. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 2008, 190n.

———. “On Wisconsin: the Derivation and Referent of an Old Puzzle in American Placenames.” Onoma, 38, 2003, 39–56.

Image credit: Map of the North Western and Michigan Territories. Fielding Lucas and Bartholomew Welch, c.1819. Library of Congress. Public Domain.