Pickaninny

Pickaninny (also picaninny or piccaninny or pickinniny) is a term in English which refers to a racist and derogatory caricature of dark-skinned children of African descent. It is a pidgin word form, which may be derived from the Portuguese pequenino (a diminutive version of the word pequeno, "little"). In modern sensibility, the term implies a caricature which can be used in a derogatory and racist sense. According to the scholar Robin Bernstein, who describes the meaning in the context of the United States, the pickaninny is characterized by three qualities: "the figure is always juvenile, always of color, and always resistant if not immune to pain". These three qualifiers demonstrate the dehumanizing nature of the pickaninny caricature and are reflective of the predominantly colonial society in which its use was popularised, where Caucasian values predominated.