blanket, noun

Origin:
U.S. EnglishShow more From U.S. English (referring to the Native Americans); see also quotation 1913.
obsolescent, offensive, usually derogatory
Attributive, comb., and in phrr.: designating Black African people who wear the blanket as a garment and who cling to their traditional way of life; therefore meaning ‘unsophisticated’, ‘rural’. Cf. dressed.
a. Attributive, passing into adjective Designating an unsophisticated, rural Black person, especially in the offensive phrr. blanket boy, blanket kaffir, blanket native (see also raw, red adjective sense 2 b ii), and blanket vote, blanket votes, the collective Black vote in South Africa.
1892 B. Mitford ’Tween Snow & Fire p.xxxviThere were a few muttered jeers about..getting into the assembly on the strength of ‘blanket votes’.
1903 Lord A. Milner in Indian Opinion 23 July 4Cross issues and totally irrelevant considerations..gather round the question, such as..the eccentricities of what is known as the ‘Blanket’ vote in the Cape Colony.
1904 Daily Chron. (U.K.) 13 May 3The ‘compound’ system is essentially degrading even for ‘blanket’ Kaffirs.
1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 64Blanket vote, The collective Kaffir vote is thus designated. The reference is, of course, to the blanket which has gradually but generally superseded the more dignified Karos..as an article of apparel among the natives.
1920 R.H. Lindsey-Renton Diary (1979) 12I saw a few Kaffir kraals inhabited by what are called ‘blanket kaffirs’, that is those who clothe themselves in blankets and not in modern civilised garb.
1928 E.A. Walker Hist. of S. Afr. 544The tendency had..been to raise the franchise qualification to keep out the blanket kaffir.
1948 E. Hellmann Rooiyard 103Some women regard the custom with contempt as being performed only by ‘red’ or ‘blanket’ Natives and not by educated Natives.
1953 P. Lanham (title)Blanket Boy’s Moon.
1958 A. Fugard Dimetos & Two Early Plays (1977) 127Tobias: I’m not frightened of work. Guy: There, you see, old Blanket-boy’s got guts.
1963 K. Mackenzie Dragon to Kill 140Look at them in those countries up north — ordinary blanket kaffirs and they have independence already.
1973 P.A. Whitney Blue Fire 83They had come to be set apart from the black population and had fared better in the Cape Peninsula than the ‘blanket native,’ so recently from the reservation.
b. In the phr. man of the blanket (nonce), blanket boy (see sense a).
1968 A. Fulton Dark Side of Mercy 16Her beer was spoken of with longing wherever men of the blanket gathered, not only in mountain homelands, but far afield as the compounds of the Reef goldmines.
designating Black African people who wear the blanket as a garment and who cling to their traditional way of life; therefore meaning ‘unsophisticated’, ‘rural’.
Designating an unsophisticated, rural Black person, especially in the offensive phrr. blanket boy, blanket kaffir, blanket native (see also raw, red adjective sense 2 b ii), and blanket vote, blanket votes, the collective Black vote in South Africa.
In the phr. man of the blanket (nonce),blanket boy (see sense a).
Derivatives:
Hence blanketeer  noun  nonce, blanket boy (see sense a).
1928 N. Devitt Blue Lizard 149 (Swart)The Golden City and its ways had turned these natives from ‘blanketeers’ in all their pristine manliness and innocence, into black dudes, with a tendency to emulate the white man’s vices.
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18921973

Derivatives

blanketeer
Blankes Alleen, noun phrasen. phr.blaps, nounn.
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