"Trifling’" wasn't always racist. It’s a 16th-century word that appears in the Bible. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 1535 Coverdale Bible includes this passage from I Timothy 5:13: "Not onely are they ydell, but also tryflinge & busybodies, speakynge thinges which are not comly." Then they made it mean something worse.
Historians say that enslavers insulted enslaved plantation workers by calling them “trifling,” in addition to slow, lazy, and devious. Did we reclaim “trifling”?
Some may say we reclaimed "trifling" in everyday language and popular culture, like in the song “Bills, Bills, Bills,” by Destiny’s Child. Barack Obama used it in his 2012 memoir. While these examples used the word to describe a person’s shortcomings, in the blues songs of the 1920s it meant unfaithfulness and sexual promiscuity. Given this history, should we still use the word?
We've inherited many things that were never meant to be ours, including language. Our creativity in adapting things and making them uniquely ours is unmatched. Whether you decide to call someone “trifling” or not is up to you.
But let’s all vow to peep and point out the most triflin' things about the oppressive systems we're up against and use our creativity to make a new world for ourselves.