zip coon

English

Etymology

From an 1834 minstrel song titled "Ole Zip Coon" about a fictional Black man named Zip Coon. The song stereotypically portrays Zip Coon as unintelligent and incapable of assimilating into white American society.

Noun

zip coon (plural zip coons)

1. (US, obsolete, derogatory, offensive, ethnic slur) A Black man.
   • 1858, Big Bear's Adventures and Travels, page 98:

     Arter a while we got done—but it looked like I had bad luck for in sittin' down agin I lik'd to have sot on Barbry's tom cat, which if I had, I shoulder bin like Kurnel Zip Coon's wife who jump'd into a holler log to mash two young panters to deth, and they scratched her so bad she couldn t set down for two munse.

   • 1883, The Century, volume 26, page 613:

     "De gal w'at git ole Brer Jack 'ull git a natchul pacer, sho'. He move mo' one-sideder dan ole Zip Coon, w'ich he rack up de branch all night long wid he nose p'int lak he gwine 'cross."

   • 1886, Hiram H. McLane, The Capture of the Alamo: A Historical Tragedy, in Four Acts, with Prologue, page 85:

     I'm ther old eriginal zip-coon, And that uther coon er sottin' on er rail; And I'm that same old coon What allers war er coon, And that never got er lickin' till yet.

2. (African-American Vernacular, dated) A Black person who accepts an inferior social status to white people.
   • 2006, Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media, page 26:

     There were many names for the coon stock character. He has been referred to as the urban zip coon, dancing dandy, and, most notably, Sambo, the happy slave.

   • 2009, Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather, page 2:

     Dixon's "Zip Coon" celebrated such a dandy in 1834, and the engraving on the cover of the sheet music portrayed a zip coon in just such a jacket.

   • 2019, Elizabeth L. Sanderson, Spike Lee's Bamboozled and Blackface in American Culture, page 28:

     George Dixon first portrayed the zip coon in 1834.