The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #47148   Message #702065
Posted By: wysiwyg
01-May-02 - 11:37 AM
Thread Name: eena meena mackeracka (children's rhymes)
Subject: RE: eena meena mackeracka
OK, I know I am not the only one thinking of this one from the US.... here is how I learned it:

Eenie meenie miney moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If it hollers, let it go,
Eenie meenie miney moe.

So that's not the original version. People say "Hey! Don't call ME a racist! I don;t have any of THAT stuff in ME!" Yet the culture transmits racist messages even before we are old enough to know there is such a thing as "difference" between human beings (but not really) (but there is) (but we have more in common than we have different) (ad infinitum)

The version I heard later in life was not about a tiger; it used what is now known universally to be an ugly racial epithet, "nigger."

~Susan