Racial Slur Or Just a Word?

Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams acted "niggardly" in accepting the resignation of an aide who used that same word in a staff meeting, NAACP chairman Julian Bond said Thursday.

"Seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on this issue," Bond said pointedly. "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding."

But the aide, David Howard, defended the mayor, insisting that it was his idea to resign and the mayor should not be blamed for it. Howard used the word in a meeting to describe how he had administered a municipal government fund.

"Niggardly" means Scrooge-like. But it sounds a lot like a common racial slur. And some of Howard's colleagues took offense.

Mayor Williams, who is black, initially accepted Howard's resignation, saying that his aide, who is white, showed poor judgment even though he "didn't say anything that was in itself racist."

But the mayor softened his position a bit on Wednesday, saying an investigation was under way and Howard might be rehired in a different position, if he's judged to have done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, sentiment on the streets of Washington is split.

Some residents say Howard, a former Williams campaign worker who handled citizen complaints for the mayor's office, is guilty only of poor word choice.

Others say he should have realized that his use of the word might be seen as offensive.

Kojo Nnamdi, a black man who hosts a public interest talk show, said "It's indicative of the state of race relations in Washington. A simple explanation should have sufficed. When it comes to race in Washington, apparently a simple explanation doesn't get it."

Jim Deely, a 49-year-old white advertising manager, says it was all just a misunderstanding. "Howard resigned too soon and Williams accepted it too fast."

But Marcus Marshall, 22, a black employee in a sporting goods store, said Howard deserved to lose his job. "I don't agree with him saying that kind of word. He should be punished because it's so close to... a degrading word."

Dictionaries define "niggardly," a word with Scandinavian roots, as miserly or stingy, and attribute no offensive connotations to it.

But a new reference work, A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, leaves open the possibility of confusion. While the word has no connection to the racial slur, the book says, "some speakers and writers have come to shun it just to avoid misunderstandings."

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