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"Coonin'" Term Resurfaces at Howard U.

Photo credit: Photofest/From "Stepin Fetchit" Stepin Fetchit, who played "coon" characters, with Will Rogers in the 1935 film "The County Chairman."

By Traver Riggins
Black College Wire

Coon. For some Howard University students, the word is used in everyday conversation.

As in, "That person's coonin'." Or doing the Chicken Noodle Soup dance. That's "coonin'," too.

"I guess we use it in the same sense people use the 'n' word," said Alesha Johnson, a sophomore broadcast journalism major.

For others, it is a derogatory term. They cite its history and say they would never take part in its use.

"I think it's positively asinine that students use it. The 'n' word is one thing," said Zelena Williams, a freshman print journalism major. "You can't say you're doing the same thing you're doing with the 'n' word."

The term's usage as a slang word became popular on Howard's campus in the spring of 2005, and it has carried on among many students.

Whether students use the word depends mainly on the student's personal interpretation of its history and meaning.

"Cooning to me is a negative stereotype embodying all the negative stereotypes placed on black people," said Jephree White, a junior audio production major. She encourages students to research the word, and then perhaps they will not want to continue using it.

Others say they understand enough about the word's history to justify their use of it.

"I feel like I'm educated enough that when I'm joking around, I can pretend to be ignorant. I know the history of the word and what it means," Johnson said.

In his history of African Americans in film, "Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks," film historian Donald Bogle wrote, "Before its death, the coon developed into the most blatantly degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure coons emerged as no-account niggers, those unreliable, crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language."

"Students are using it in ignorance," Russell Adams, professor emeritus of African American studies, said of the word, "not realizing that older folks, white especially, will say, 'Poor things. They really are ignorant as to what we used to do to them.' Black people will say, 'Someone has failed to tell them,'" Adams said.

Some authorities say the word comes from "racoon," but according to Adams, it stems from the Portuguese word "barracoon," meaning prisoner in a cage.

"The word 'barracoon' translates into English as the word barrack, barrier, something that holds you back," Adams said. He said that white people adapted and shortened the word when looking for slave labor.

"They would say, 'I need some coons,' meaning they were in need of some black folks who were already locked up because they've already been broken in for service," he said.

Adams said that when people use the word today they do not realize what they are saying, while older generations know that the word is an insult.

"I'm from the generation that when you use the word 'coon,' you're starting a fight and you hope you win," Adams said.

"My great-great grandparents would say 'Stop cooning!' when the kids started acting up," said Lila Ammons, African American studies chair.

The uses of the word can change with the group using it. Sociology professor Ivor Livingston said curses could be more or less offensive depending on the context.

Johnson said that the way she and her friends use the word changes its meaning altogether.

"Words are just symbols. Any connotations attached to them, positive or negative, are just what you make them to be," she said.

However, Ammons argues that the word still has a broader context outside each individual's circle and that a group of friends does not possess the power or control to change it.

"People in the academic community look to Webster, not to each other," she said.

It has not been determined where contemporary use of the word originated. Some students claim to have heard it in their hometowns, while others say they have never encountered it outside campus.

White, who first heard the word used at Howard, said, "It's mostly an HU phenomenon. When I go [to my hometown] I don't hear it." She hears students using it to refer to their peers' behavior, particularly when they are acting foolish.

"I mostly hear it used sarcastically. They're using it to make fun," she said.

The reason students choose to use it at all could have to do with their social groups.

"It's like a handshake to a fraternity," Livingston said. He said people of different subcultures use the word in order to fit in.

Adams attributes its ease of adaptation to the way society is structured today.

"The sadness about some parts of desegregation is that there is a segregation of ignorance," he said.

"Any group that forgets how stuff happened then is bound to be a victim of what is happening now."

Traver Riggins, a Howard University student, writes for the Hilltop.

Posted Nov. 10, 2006