Having a nigger in the woodpile and a skeleton in the closet are closely related problems, although subtly different. In the first case it is a problem which is lurking, hitherto unseen, but which may pop up very soon to cause mayhem and mischief. In the second case it is a problem which has been hidden from public gaze quite deliberately but which may yet emerge, clanking and rattling, to ruin one’s life.
Both terms are capable of giving grave offence. The first because it probably dates from the time at which some white people enslaved some black people (about 150 years, give or take), as opposed to the time when black people enslaved black people (about 2,000 years, give or take). It has that very bad word in it, a pejorative word, which can cause hurt and anguish. People of colour understandably object to this phrase, even if it has long been separated from its original meaning.
The phrase ‘skeleton in the closet’ is, of course, offensive to Britain’s community of fleshless beings, or ‘people of bone’ as they prefer to be called these days. Why pick on a skeleton, they argue, while also objecting to the term ‘skeleton’ itself, which has negative connotations relating to the undead, etc. ‘It is a common and hurtful misapprehension that we “rattle”, anyway,’ a spokesman for the Advancement of Unfleshed Peoples (AUP) told me. ‘We may joke about this rattling among ourselves and even use the word skeleton from time to time. As in, “yo, skeleton bro, how you hangin’? Loose?” But that’s because we’ve reclaimed the terminologies. They are not for the likes of you to use. You people with flesh, who have cultural hegemony and economic power.
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