I was watching the latest episodes of The X-Files a couple of weeks ago and in one of the episode a middle aged white man driving down the road in Texas stares at a Mid Eastern/Asian guy at a traffic stop and says:
Looks like we got a visitor. A little brownie. Are we in the
wrong country then? Huh?
So in the above situation, does the word brownie have the same implication as the N-Word? I did do some research on this subject albeit on the Internet only, but could not find any authoritative source that helps me to compare and consequently figure out the implication.
Best Answer
No, it does not. In this context, "brownie" is clearly intended as a racial slur referring to skin color, but the word can also be used in a number of perfectly innocent ways:
None of these usages are treated as tainted by association - one need not use circumlocutions when asking for a chocolate brownie at a bakery, for instance. By contrast, "nigger" is treated as highly offensive, to the extent that even some unrelated words that sound similar (e.g, "niggardly") are often avoided.