When I was 5 years old we didn't play "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a Tiger by the Toe"

[Tom Rinaldo]

We said "catch a (N-Word) by the toe" instead, all of us white kids did, and we never gave it a thought. We weren't aware of our racism at the moment, we were just playing a game. This was back around 1955 in Queens County NYC in my case, but my partner who is two years younger has the same memory from her growing up in Orange County California.

Racism too often saturates cultures when it isn't being consciously countered and opposed. I don't remember how the change happened for me but at some point as a kid I began counting out with Tigers instead. I wasn't aware that I was not being racist by using Tiger instead of the N word, it wasn't making a political statement to revise the word used. It just "became" the new standard. Or at least that's how my limited memory of that part of my childhood has it, but in retrospect it's obvious to me that somewhere somehow some people effected that change without me being aware of any "controversy." I still knew absolutely nothing about race relations in America, the change just seemed to happen. The change didn't just happen.

Overt racism became less socially acceptable because some people fought to make it so, and because of that, one small but insidious self perpetuating piece of the unconscious indoctrination of young white children into the mindset of racism was defused for me during my childhood.That is where the war is really won or lost. The front lines today are being fought over "All men (sic) are created equal" vs "The Great Replacement Theory", over "We are a nation of immigrants" vs "our cherished threatened white identity."

And there are always children paying attention.

[wryter2000]

1. We were aware of that one

But said tiger.

[Tickle]

2. I remember that

and when I hear my grandson starting to say eenie meenie .... I think about it

[The Jungle 1]

3. We did not say tiger until...

My one neighbor explained his mom said he had to stop.
Funny what sticks in your head.
Make up boy took us backward. Far backward. These repukes think it is ok again

[CrackityJones75]

5. Yeah I was raised tiger

But other kids were raised the other way and I remember it changing. This was early 1980’s.

[The Jungle 1]

8. I was talking early to middle 60s.

[ChazII]

16. We said tiger in the early 60's, n/t.

[greenjar_01]

11. Definitely had a share of kids using "N word"

In NYC in the early 80s. They did it consciously, with one even saying "Don't say Tiger. It's supposed to be (N-word)." Queens, NY, probably 1982.

[Wounded Bear]

4. There are a number of racist sayings like that that we used...

It took a bit of effort to re-train, frankly, once I realized what was up.

I too am a child of the 50's and 60's.

Societies have "ages" too. I always thought that the US in the late 20th Century was in its "teen" years, acting like a brash teenager fleshing out what they want to be when they grew up. Not liking the current phase much.

[milestogo]

6. We used to tell Polack jokes

I have no idea why we were making fun of Poles. In those jokes you can easily substitute for another group like blondes.

[llashram]

15. or?

I don't understand...culture jokes vs jokes intended to hurt racially. This seems diversion instead of looking for solutions to racial hate. If I'm wrong tell me...

[milestogo]

17. Well it would be interesting to track the logic of how jokes evolve.

Jokes are especially pliable when it comes to hurting people.

[llashram]

20. having grown up

in times where the word tiger was definitely not used in the einee-meene children's ditty and racism still prevalent in this culture. I do wonder that very thing...

[milestogo]

21. I remember hearing that too but sometime it changed.

And lots of other groups have been ridiculed. Making fun of gays, fat people, women, arabs - have all been acceptable tat some point.

Brazil Nuts used to be referred to as "nigger toes"... I haven't heard that in a long time.

[llashram]

27. this american culture

is still so suffused with racial hate that 60millions could, without blinking an eye, vote for a racist president. I am sick and tired that this is still going on. And the brazil nuts I remember also...unless there is a major paradigm shift in thinking, racism will never go away in Amerikkka. Grew up in the 50s and here I am back in those days of yesteryears...hi ho silver

[milestogo]

35. I do think there has been a shift, but it does not include everyone.

I am white. My parent's were part of the "white flight" in the 1960s that involved escaping an urban area so that we would not have to go to integrated schools. The real estate in our area pretty much prevented blacks from living there. So I grew up in a world that was a lily-white suburbia.

Being the next generation, I chose differently. I choose to live in integrated areas and have friends of other races. I do think white people are more aware of the inequality than ever before. I have become estranged from an relative who used the n-word when referring to our first black President.

Shortly after the George Floyd killing I was at a gas station where some white cops were in a confrontation with two young black men. Everyone standing outside reached for their cell phones and started filming. The situation did not escalate, but everyone was keeping an eye on it. I felt like that was a shift from the "it doesn't concern me" attitude of the past.

[Golden Raisin]

7. I remember that too (as a child in the 1950s)

Also a box of chocolate candies at the movies that looked like little brown babies which were openly called "N-word babies". My mom absolutely forbade use of that word EVER !!! and I grew up thinking the N-word was infinitely worse than the F-word or any other "bad" word.

[Calista241]

9. I was born in 75, and always used Tiger.

Never even knew Tiger was substituted for the n-word until today. I've been oblivious for most of my life though, so not surprised.

[Jerry2144]

38. Same for me

I was born in the late 60s in SoCal. I had heard that rhyme one before with the N word but thought it was people being assholes and it was wrong. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I learned the original version was really with the N word.

There are other phrases out there I thought were innocent, but turned out to be based in racism. I hate not knowing which ones really are racist and using them and hurting other people because of my ignorance. But when I am informed about the racist intent behind them, I stop using them.

[greenjar_01]

10. "Tiger" is a the barest of winking replacements

It has a similar letter structure, and the whole "If he hollers, let him go" now makes no sense.

Most places don't use any of it anymore for this reason.

[Walleye]

28. A black guy I knew who was in the Air Force in the south in the 70s, said they used "Trigger"

As a substitute for the N-word. They thought it was real funny I guess

[Binkie The Clown]

12. The first time I heard "tiger" (early 1950s) it just sounded wrong to me.

There were blacks and Puerto Ricans in my Cub Scout troupe and my school, and in my neighborhood racism just didn't exist. We all lived together as friends, and we all used the N-word in that particular rhyme. Nobody gave it a second thought.

[The Magistrate]

13. We Did Tiger, Sir

I was brought up understanding the term of respect was Negro, the term of general reference was colored, and that only trash used other terms.

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. You were brought up right, in the context of then current terminology

In that regard (and no doubt others) your family was/is worthy of great respect

[mopinko]

25. me too.

for someone raised on the white side of a small town, i was raised right. never heard either of my parents judge a person like that for any reason, let alone the color of their skin.
when my irish grandparents came here, they werent white yet. i was raised as color blind as it is possible to be in murika.

[dumbcat]

49. Exactly as we were raised

and I learned that in 1955 from my first Den Mother in Cub Scouts, Mrs. Irwin, who was the mom of the only colored family in our town. We would have never used the term "black".

And I still keep in touch with her son, Carl, via Facebook, after all these years. We often reminisce about our Cub Scout days and her role as our Den Mother.

[LeftInTX]

18. I learned tiger at home, but heard the other one

N-word not allowed in my home

I lived on military bases. Born in 1956

[DashOneBravo]

46. Same. Born mid sixties

[nevergiveup]

19. I cringe today when I hear "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe"

because of the thought of what once followed. We used the N-Word as little kids. The thought of it is sobering.

[RaDaR63]

22. And, there was the racist slang for Brazil nuts

My father used that term. I think a lot of people in that generation just used terms that were passed down from the previous generation without giving it much thought. Dad stopped saying that word by the 80s. There was a transition period where he'd occasionally slip, and look guilty when he realized what he'd done.

[Walleye]

29. I sure do remember that one

[Ferrets are Cool]

34. Unfortunately my mother probably still uses that term

[Xavier Breath]

36. Reminds me of Christmas in the 1970s

when my Mom would put out the mixed nuts for company and used that term. Thankfully she stopped at some point and it's been decades since I've even thought of that.

[RaDaR63]

39. Sorry to bring it up

if I caused you any pain. I don't think it necessarily made anyone a bad person. Most of us have blind spots, and they're different things in different times.

[Xavier Breath]

42. No need to apologize.

It just struck me as one of the weird ways our minds work with our memories. I never purchase/eat Brazil nuts, so that memory might have stayed unacknowledged and locked away forever in some dusty corner of my mind had this conversation not come up.

[llmart]

48. I was just going to mention that one.

My father also used that term, but thankfully I had a mother who taught us right from wrong. She would have done the Ralphie in Christmas Story trick of getting the bar of soap out - Lava soap at that.

I was brought up in the 50's also.

[ananda]

23. Our mother heard us do that once, and..

believe me, we used the word tiger from then on.

We were little and I don't even think we knew what
the n-word meant, just repeating stuff.

But she made sure we never used it again, and after
we grew up a little, we understood why.

She was a good mom that way -- this was in Dallas.

[Crunchy Frog]

24. I never even heard about the racist version until a few years ago reading about it here.

I was born in 1963.

[CoopersDad]

26. OMG, I had forgotten that...

Oh my, it was a long time ago and it wasn't in use for very long in my little household but that sure as hell is how my older cousins used the term and played the game.

My uncle, their father, was an asshole.

[Walleye]

30. We always used tiger, my mom didn't allow words that demeaned anyone

But a lot of other kids used the other version in the mid 50s when I was a child

[mia]

31. We said tiger in the 50s in Bethesda, Md.

The first time I heard the N word was at Glen Echo Park in the early 60s.

[Ferrets are Cool]

32. You aren't the only one.

Most of us over the age of 60 have some things in our past that we would rather forget.

[Lettuce Be]

33. We played but said Tiger

[CTyankee]

37. I learned the racist one early on in segregated Texas, also.

That was before Brown v. Board, even.

I haven't thought of it until you posted this. I'm glad you did. We have this big racist streak in our very language.

[randr]

40. I grew up in the same era

I was taunted by neighbor children to call our cleaning lady the n-word. Only time my mother really punished me. Washed my mouth out with soap, ivory soap-the worst kind.
As the civil rights movement became part of the daily life, most of us celebrated the changes. My first year of High School was the year we integrated with near-by living black students, possibly a fifth of the student body. We were so glad to be a part of the national movement. Our senior class president was John Henry Anderson, a star on the football team. He and his girl friend were King and Queen at our prom. They invited all of us to their homes following graduation. A class of 600+.
All of this ended with the assassination of MLK and Bobby K. Our world turned upside down and we are still suffering the consequences of the distrust these events brought.

[BlackSkimmer]

41. I grew up in the south in the 60s.

We used “tiger” and I never heard the other version until much later.

[hunter]

43. When I was a kid my grandma overheard us using the "Tiger" version...

... which is how we'd heard it in school and she took it upon herself to say there was another nasty version that we should NEVER use.

After that unsettling lecture I just quit eeny...meeny...miney...moe entirely.

I wasn't raised with any overtly racist baggage, but there was a lot of subtle stuff I missed. My parents politics can be described as "Hollywood Liberal," heavily influenced by my mom's pacifist upbringing.

My dad's father was a former Army Air Corp officer and fully supported integration in the military. He was big on treating everyone with respect.

When he first met my wife he was a perfect gentleman. But when we announced our engagement he freaked out. Men in his family simply didn't marry, in his words, "Mexican girls." That part of his Montana upbringing hadn't left him.

I guess it was okay to merely date them...

To his credit he got over it.

My wife still occasionally calls me out for my blind spots. As a white guy who grew up in a community that was 99% white I've still got a few.

[asa4ever]

44. I did not hear the "N" word or any racist or antisemitic word

until I was 12 and we moved to a small town.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

45. We did too

Everyone did. Didn't know any better.

[Hekate]

47. The changeover for my sibs & me took place in 1957, when we moved from SoCal to Hawai'i

Just like that.

For a household where our mother preached tolerance (the word of that era) and wouldn’t have allowed the N-word in the house, we sure learned the bad words from rhyming games on the playground.

Yes, children are always paying attention.

[raccoon]

50. In the early 60s, in a small South Carolina town, I was playing with some kids at a neighbor's house

And we were using that counting out rhyme. And we used the N-word.

The family’s maid, who was AA, came out and chewed us out.

[Disaffected]

51. Same here.

We also had a common variant. When playing "hide and go seek", if the seeker gave up, he/she would call out &quot N-Word)s free, white men too, if you come I won't count you". No-one thought anything of it at the time so we kids were blissful in our ignorance. I suppose that there were very few black folks in our city at the time also had a bearing on it.

[newdayneeded]

52. My dad used to use the saying

"Keep your cotton picking hands off it" I never realized how racist it sounded at the time, I bet he didn't either. it's probably one of those sayings he heard as a child in the 30s.