Further...
"Though some folk etymologies suggest that the term was based on the experience of the African-American slave, there’s no hard evidence for this, either. According to this theory, the term was used to refer to “White slavemasters … who raped your mother in order to break the Black family down, physically and psychologically,” and also served “as a means to avoid calling your slavemaster your ‘father.’ ” However, according to Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F-Word, “any kind of folk etymological explanation of motherfucker or motherfucking is not true” and “there’s no evidence of the term from slavery times and nothing to suggest that it ever was used in reference to slave masters.” While the first recorded instance of the word happens to be from an African-American, Sheidlower says “there's evidence of its use, even at early times, from whites as well.”
