Page "Nigger" Paragraph 26

Moreover, unlike the literary escaped slave Jim, antebellum slaves used the artifice of self-deprecation ( known as " Uncle Toms "), in pandering to societal racist assumptions about the black man's low intelligence, by advantageously using the word nigger to escape the violence inherent to slavery.

Implicit to " Uncle Tomming " was the unspoken reminder to white folk that a presumably inferior and sub-human person could not, reasonably, be held responsible for poorly realized work, a kitchen fire, or any such catastrophic offense.

The artificial self-deprecation deflected responsibility, in hope of escaping the violent wraths of overseer and master.

Using nigger as a self-referential identity term also was a way of avoiding white suspicion, of encountering an intelligent slave, and so put whites at their ease.

In context, a slave who referred to himself, or another black man, as a nigger presumed the master's perceiving him as a slave who has accepted his societally sub-ordinate role as private property, thus, not ( potentially ) subversive of the authority of the master's white supremacy.