Nigger is a word which refers to black people. Today, it is often treated as a racist insult, as often compared to "nigga" used in pop culture slang. Before the early 1900s, the word "nigger" was simply used to mean a black person (from negro) and was not considered racist, while the old term "black" was disliked and replaced with the word "colored" and later, with the wider covering term "people of color". In the United States the slur is mainly used by white supremacists as a prejudicial to African Americans of slave origin.