H.N.I.C. comes from slavery times when African Americans were referred to as Niggers as an accepted derogatory term. Over time blacks began to use the term to refer to themselves. Often the slave master would have house slave house servants and put one of his "Niggers" in charge of other slaves in the house and sometimes in the fields. This position became know as the Head Nigger in Charge. In African American culture this term is mostly used to poke fun at ourselves not to degrade ourselves as was done by the slave masters and larger white society. The acronym HNIC was created so that blacks could poke fun at themselves while whites were ignorant of what the joke was about. HNIC was coined so that the joke remained an inside joke and only recently become know to whites mostly through reality shows.
