rag-head, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

rag-head n.

[the cloth that each wears as a head-covering]

1. (US) a gypsy, a traveller.

1943		J. Mitchell McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (2001) 177: The Boyaschutza call the nomad women rag-heads.
2012		W. Keyser ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Raghead — Derogatory epithet for ‘gypsy’.

2. (US) a Hindu labourer; also attrib.

1918		H.M. Rideout Key of the Fields 261: Your raghead friend Ghanda Singh [Ibid.] 340: Call yourself an Amurrican, and go pickin’ up raghead niggers and Chinks and Britishers?
1921		P. & T. Casey Gay-cat 70: They were brown men [... ] with heads wrapped in red, black, yellow and white turbans! [...] ‘It’s the Ragheads, all right — a whole army of Hindoo laborers.’.
1931		Central Qld Herald (Rockhampton, Qld) 9 Apr. 50/2: Not long past, Chowder Lal had been a ‘raghead’ up the Scaramento [ibid.] 50/4: The Swami and his two helpers — nee ‘ragheads’ — pulled aside a curtain.
1947		J. Steinbeck Wayward Bus 107: Edgar was still trying to make out where the Hindus wanted to go. ‘The god-damned rag heads,’ he said to himself.

3. (Aus./US) an Arab native of the Middle East.

[1915		Truth (Brisbane) 25 July 3/4: ‘The Giptians, rags an’ all, are better than all your talent; they don't go sneakin’ a cobber's bit o skirt when he’s away’].
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 154: Rag Head.–An Oriental, one who wears a turban.
1954		Advertiser (Adelaide) 28 Jan. 2/5: I was talking to the head of one of the oldest Arab families in Morocco [...] One of the top constructioners [...] walked by. ‘Hi, Ruark,’ he said, ‘who’s the rag-head’.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 814: rag head – An Oriental, one who wears a turban.
1989		W. Kotzwinkle Midnight Examiner (1990) 41: Bunch of ragheads. They don’t drive a civilized cab.
1992		R. Marcinko Rogue Warrior (1993) 327: Then they’ll be ready for those ragheads in the Med.
1998		K. Anderson Night Dogs 184: ‘If you’re Muslims [...] why don’t you wear turbans, like all the other ragheads’.
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 168: If it was the ragheads, they knew exactly what they were after.
2008		Simon & Burns ‘Bomb in the Garden’ Generation Kill ep. 7 [TV script] Fuckin’ Iraqi cigarettes. Next I’ll be eating raghead pussy.
2016		Wash. Post 15 OCt. 🌐 Stein, at various times, yelled at Somali women dressed in traditional garb, calling them ‘f—– raghead b——,’ the complaint says.

4. (UK/US) a Sikh; also attrib.

1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 183: A raghead Indian or a Tonto Indian?
1998		R. Puxley Fresh Rabbit 86: In ordinary slang a Sikh is known as a ‘raghead’.

5. (US black) with ref. to the bandanna or do-rag n. worn by old ladies and latterly gang members.

(a) one who wears a scarf or bandanna tied round the head; also attrib.

1963		C. Cooper Jr ‘Yet Princes Follow’ in Black! (1996) 190: The young ‘ragheads,’ as he called them by dint of their habit of tying kerchiefs about their marcels to keep down sweat and protect the sheens.
1981		J. Wambaugh Glitter Dome (1982) 67: The brother was one of those dumb old raghead niggers.

(b) a subservient black person (suggestion is a woman), willing to embrace white stereotyping [the bandana trad. found round the head of a black ‘mammy’ or servant].

1970

R.D. Abrahams Positively Black 50: [T]here has been a changing attitude [. . .] so the accommodating pose is no longer regarded as viable, and those who use this approach are called ‘rag-heads’ and ‘Uncle Toms’.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

6. (US) a native of India or Pakistan.

1967

R. Starnes Requiem in Utopia 162: Do you know who armed both sides in the India-Pakistan war? [...] Arming two starving mobs of ragheads who haven’t enough wit to learn to farm in five thousand years.