Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a black person.

1886		Sporting Times 27 Mar. 2/5: We mustn’t wash on Your Kippour [sic] / So get’s as black as schwatza’s .
1958		F. Norman Bang To Rights 36: There was a schfatzer working on the next bench to me.
1959		F. Norman in Encounter n.d. in Norman’s London (1969) 62: After I had done a carpet (three months) she gave me the belt (finished with me) and went off with some schwartze (Negro), and the last I heard was he had stuck her up the spout (made her pregnant).
1963		A. Baron Lowlife (2001) 39: This is now a garbage heap of lost, ferocious schwartzers.
1967		L. Bruce Essential Lenny Bruce 15: Have I ever talked about the schwartzes when the schwartzes have gone home?
1970		G.F. Newman Sir, You Bastard 132: Same difference, spade, swartzer.
1977		P. Hamill Flesh and Blood (1978) 243: ‘Goddam schwartze,’ Younstein said.
1978		L. Kramer Faggots 71: A neighbourhood of polacks and schvartzas.
1978		H. Selby Jr Requiem for a Dream (1987) 241: She thought of what her family would do if they could see her making it with a schwartzer.
1983		I.L. Allen Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 46: Color Allusions, Other than ‘Black’ and ‘Negro’: [...] schwarze [or schwarz, swatzy, schwerze, swartzy, schvartza, schvartze, schvartzeh, schwartze, schvartzer, schwartzer. Mainly, Jewish and German use, eventually passing into American slang].
1987		T. Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities 565: When he was growing up, the goyim were all Catholics, unless you counted the shvartzer, which nobody did.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 8: Quick suspects the shvarze didn’t find what he was looking for.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 54: Stick with the shvartzes – those jazz guys make good copy.
1991		(con. 1948) in J. Breslin Damon Runyon (1992) 391: The one shva is choking the other sonofabitch.
1995		S. Jacobs Enemy Within 65: ‘It’s all these schwartzes,’ she panted.
1997		E. Little Another Day in Paradise 232: He wants to make an example of the schvarts that made the move.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 184: And what the fuck you think you’re doin [...] shittin your pants about some dead schwartza.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 122: Shvartzes are shvartzes. I don’t want Martin Luther King on our doorstep.
2005		S. Auslander ‘One Death to Go’ in Beware of God (2007) 112: The meshuginah shvartza [...] didn’t know anything about the Kabbalists either.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 297/2: schvartza a black man.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 204: Confidential riles up the schvartzers and faygeles.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 686: ‘Let’s lose the myth of the schwartzer’s dick. It’s just black power trouser division’.

2. (US gay) one who prefers black partners.