>and niggers…don't forget about the niggers.
> I didn't mean it THAT way."
My dad was AAF, B17's. Born and raised in south Texas. Growing up things like digging ditches were "nigger work". It was done with a "Mexican dragline" (shovel). When you blew a windfall it was because you were "nigger rich". A big deal for us growing up was to go over to "nigger town" to get us some "nigger food". Soul music, a lot of jazz, R&B, was "nigger music".
There's no doubt in my mind that it derogatory to some, but it was normal everyday speech even in mixed race household's and workplace's.
Nobody gave it a second thought until the manufactured divisiveness of the civil rights movement created a stigma. Hell, relationships with blacks were exploited in advertising and marketing. Pic related.
We moved to California after the war, and the blacks there were totally integrated into society until the trouble makers from the South's civil rights movement came out and started fomenting unrest and dissatisfaction among the west coast black population.