There’s a fairly well-known six-letter word that starts with ‘n’ and ends with ‘r’ that European-descended people have no business using because so many European slavers used it as a weapon of oppression that its usage still pokes emotional scars today. I have no problem with this, and do not use this word in conversation or in my own writing.
It might make reading certain works of literature aloud in company awkward, but I doubt anybody will call upon me to do a public reading of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Joseph Conrad’s 1897 novel concerning a tubercular sailor on the ship Narcissus any time soon. Should I be proven wrong, I hope I will have the decency and good sense to decline.
Some may call it cowardice, but I’m not as young a man as I once was and must perforce pick my battles with greater care. The “right” to use racial slurs is not one I anticipate exercising except under dire provocation, and I’m more likely to exercise it by calling some neo-Confederate ideologue a worthless cracker and an ignorant shitfountain whose father daily regrets not settling for a handjob.
However, there’s another noun and adjective/adverb set originating in Middle English (and possibly even Old Norse) that sounds an awful lot like the well-known and more recent slur: “niggard” and “niggardly”. The former can be taken as a synonym for “cheapskate”, “miser”, or “congresscritter working on non-military budget items”. The latter describes the behavior of cheapskates, misers, and congresscritters: cheap, ungenerous, stingy, and miserly.
You may have seen the noun form used in Tolkien, particularly in The Lord of The Rings:
“No niggard are you, Eomer,” said Aragorn, “to give thus to Gondor the fairest thing in your realm!”
This is Aragorn expressing approval that Eomer has given his blessing for his sister Eowyn to marry Faramir, as if she were a treasure that Eomer would have been a miser to keep to himself. Not that Eowyn should need any man’s blessing anyway after she put a sword through the Witch-King of Angmar’s head, but whatever.
There are some self-righteous leftists online suggesting that writers should avoid the use of “niggard” and “niggardly” because they sound like that other n-word when spoken or read aloud. It’s not the request I find unreasonable, but the reasoning. I can think of better reasons to avoid the use of these words: they’re archaic, and making readers reach for a dictionary is an excellent way to lose them altogether.
After well, we have plenty of writers imitating Tolkien already. If you’re going to join their ranks, don’t do it by using archaic words that have taken on uncomfortable connotations.