{"product_id":"nigger-isbn-9780593316528","title":"Nigger","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe twentieth anniversary edition of one of the most controversial books ever published on race and language is now more relevant than ever in this season of racial reckoning—from “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn addition to a brave and bracing inquiry into the origins, uses, and impact of the infamous word, this edition features an extensive new introduction that addresses major developments in its evolution during the last two decades of its vexed history.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In the new introduction to his classic work, Kennedy questions the claim that “nigger” is the most tabooed term in the American language, faced with the implacable prevalence of its old-fashioned anti-Black sense. “Nigger” continues to be part of the loud soundtrack of the worst instances of racial aggression in American life—racially motivated assaults and murders, arson, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and workplace harassment. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConsider this: twenty years ago, Kennedy wrote that any major politician credibly accused of using “nigger” would be immediately abandoned and ostracized. He was wrong. Donald Trump, former POTUS himself, was credibly charged, and the allegation caused little more than a yawn. No one doubted the accuracy of the claim but amidst all his other racist acts his “nigger-baiting” no longer seemed shocking. “Nigger” is still very much alive and all too widely accepted.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e On the other hand, Kennedy is concerned to address the many episodes in which people have been punished for quoting, enunciating, or saying “nigger” in circumstances that should have made it clear that the speakers were doing nothing wrong—or at least nothing sufficiently wrong to merit the extent of the denunciation they suffered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He discusses, for example, the inquisition of Bill Maher (and his pathetic apology) and the (white) teachers who have been disciplined for reading out loud texts that contain “nigger.” He argues that in assessing these controversies, we ought to be more careful about the use\/mention distinction: menacingly calling someone a “nigger” is wholly different than quoting a sentence from a text by James Baldwin or Toni Morrison or Flannery O’Connor or Mark Twain.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eKennedy argues against the proposition that different rules should apply depending upon the race of the speaker of “nigger,” offering stunningly commonsensical reasons for abjuring the erection of such boundaries.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He concludes by venturing a forecast about the likely status of “nigger” in American culture during the next twenty years when we will see the clear ascendance of a so-called “minority majority” body politic—which term itself is redolent of white supremacy.“Provocative. . . . engaging and informative.” \u003ci\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Should be required reading. . . . This little book deserves to be read especially if we seek better understanding of ourselves and others.”  –\u003ci\u003eThe Dallas Morning News\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Demonstrates a key truth about the N-word. . . . it tracks our racial history and stars in a slew of court decisions that reveal large truths about bigotry and free expression.”–\u003ci\u003ePhiladelphia Inquirer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A detailed, well-researched book. . . . Kennedy boils centuries of usage–in conversation, literature, legal proceedings–down to the most pertinent and instructive.” –\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRANDALL KENNEDY\u003c\/b\u003e is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations.  He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia, the American Law Institute, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of seven books and lives in Deham, Massachusetts.CHAPTER ONE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Protean N-Word\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow should \u003ci\u003enigger \u003c\/i\u003ebe defined? Is it a part of the American cultural inheritance that warrants preservation? Why does \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e generate such powerful reactions? Is it a more hurtful racial epithet than insults such as \u003ci\u003ekike\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ewop\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ewetback\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e mick\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003echink\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003egook\u003c\/i\u003e? Am I wrongfully offending the sensibilities of readers right now by spelling out nigger instead of using a euphemism such as\u003ci\u003e N-word\u003c\/i\u003e? Should blacks be able to use \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e in ways forbidden to others? Should the law view \u003ci\u003enigger \u003c\/i\u003eas a provocation that reduces the culpability of a person who responds to it violently? Under what circumstances, if any, should a person be ousted from his or her job for saying \"nigger\"? What methods are useful for depriving \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e of destructiveness? In the pages that follow, I will pursue these and related questions. I will put a tracer on \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e, report on its use, and assess the controversies to which it gives rise. I have invested energy in this endeavor because \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e is a key word in the lexicon of race relations and thus an important term in American politics. To be ignorant of its meanings and effects is to make oneself vulnerable to all manner of perils, including the loss of a job, a reputation, a friend, even one's life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLet's turn first to etymology. \u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e is derived from the Latin word for the color black, niger. According to the \u003ci\u003eRandom House Historical Dictionary of American Slang\u003c\/i\u003e, it did not originate as a slur but took on a derogatory connotation over time. \u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e and other words related to it have been spelled in a variety of ways, including niggah, nigguh, niggur, and niggar. When John Rolfe recorded in his journal the first shipment of Africans to Virginia in 1619, he listed them as \"negars.\" A 1689 inventory of an estate in Brooklyn, New York, made mention of an enslaved \"niggor\" boy. The seminal lexicographer Noah Webster referred to Negroes as \"negers.\" (Currently some people insist upon distinguishing nigger--which they see as exclusively an insult--from nigga, which they view as a term capable of signaling friendly salutation.) In the 1700s\u003ci\u003e niger\u003c\/i\u003e appeared in what the dictionary describes as \"dignified argumentation\" such as Samuel Sewall's denunciation of slavery, \u003ci\u003eThe Selling of Joseph\u003c\/i\u003e. No one knows precisely when or how \u003ci\u003eniger\u003c\/i\u003e turned derisively into \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e and attained a pejorative meaning. We do know, however, that by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, \u003ci\u003enigger \u003c\/i\u003ehad already become a familiar and influential insult.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eA Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the United States: and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them\u003c\/i\u003e (1837), Hosea Easton wrote that \u003ci\u003enigger \u003c\/i\u003e\"is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon [blacks] as an inferior race. . . . The term in itself would be perfectly harmless were it used only to distinguish one class of society from another; but it is not used with that intent. . . . [I]t flows from the fountain of purpose to injure.\" Easton averred that often the earliest instruction white adults gave to white children prominently featured the word \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e. Adults reprimanded them for being \"worse than niggers,\" for being \"\u003ci\u003eignorant as niggers\u003c\/i\u003e,\" for having \"\u003ci\u003eno more credit than niggers\u003c\/i\u003e\"; they disciplined them by telling them that unless they behaved they would be carried off by \"\u003ci\u003ethe old nigger\u003c\/i\u003e\" or made to sit with \"\u003ci\u003eniggers\u003c\/i\u003e\" or consigned to the \"\u003ci\u003enigger seat\u003c\/i\u003e,\" which was, of course, a place of shame.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e has seeped into practically every aspect of American culture, from literature to political debates, from cartoons to song. Throughout the 1800s and for much of the 1900s as well, writers of popular music generated countless lyrics that lampooned blacks, in songs such as \"Philadelphia Riots; or, I Guess It Wasn't de Niggas Dis Time,\" \"De Nigga Gal's Dream,\" \"Who's Dat Nigga Dar A-Peepin?,\" \"Run, Nigger, Run,\" \"A Nigger's Reasons,\" \"Nigger Will Be Nigger,\" \"I Am Fighting for the Nigger,\" \"Ten Little Niggers,\" \"Niggas Git on de Boat,\" \"Nigger in a Pit,\" \"Nigger War Bride Blues,\" \"Nigger, Nigger, Never Die,\" \"Li'l Black Nigger,\" and \"He's Just a Nigger.\" The chorus of this last begins, \"He's just a nigger, when you've said dat you've said it all.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThroughout American history, \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e has cropped up in children's rhymes, perhaps the best known of which is\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEeny-meeny-miney-mo! \u003cbr\u003eCatch a nigger by the toe! \u003cbr\u003eIf he hollers, let him go! \u003cbr\u003eEeny-meeny-miney-mo!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut there are scores of others as well, including\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNigger, nigger, never die, \u003cbr\u003eBlack face and shiny eye.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then there is:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTeacher, teacher, don't whip me! \u003cbr\u003eWhip that nigger behind that tree! \u003cbr\u003eHe stole honey and I stole money. \u003cbr\u003eTeacher, teacher, wasn't that funny?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday, on the Internet, whole sites are devoted to nigger jokes. At KKKomedy Central-Micetrap's Nigger Joke Center, for instance, the \"Nigger Ghetto Gazette\" contains numerous jokes such as the following:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. What do you call a nigger boy riding a bike? \u003cbr\u003eA. Thief!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. Why do niggers wear high-heeled shoes? \u003cbr\u003eA. So their knuckles won't scrape the ground!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. What did God say when he made the first nigger? \u003cbr\u003eA. \"Oh, shit!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. What do niggers and sperm have in common? \u003cbr\u003eA. Only one in two million works!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. Why do decent white folk shop at nigger yard sales? \u003cbr\u003eA. To get all their stuff back, of course!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. What's the difference between a pothole and a nigger? \u003cbr\u003eA. You'd swerve to avoid a pothole, wouldn't you?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. How do you make a nigger nervous? \u003cbr\u003eA. Take him to an auction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. How do you get a nigger to commit suicide? \u003cbr\u003eA. Toss a bucket of KFC into traffic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. How do you keep niggers out of your backyard? \u003cbr\u003eA. Hang one in the front yard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQ. How do you stop five niggers from raping a white woman? \u003cbr\u003eA. Throw them a basketball.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e has been a familiar part of the vocabularies of whites high and low. It has often been the calling card of so-called white trash--poor, disreputable, uneducated Euro-Americans. Partly to distance themselves from this ilk, some whites of higher standing have aggressively forsworn the use of \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e. Such was the case, for example, with senators Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell, both white supremacists who never used the N-word. For many whites in positions of authority, however, referring to blacks as niggers was once a safe indulgence. Reacting to news that Booker T. Washington had dined at the White House, Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina predicted, \"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.\" During his (ultimately successful) reelection campaign of 1912, the governor of South Carolina, Coleman Livingston Blease, declared with reference to his opponent, Ira Jones, the chief justice of the state supreme court, \"You people who want social equality [with the Negro] vote for Jones. You men who have nigger children vote for Jones. You who have a nigger wife in your back yard vote for Jones.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring an early debate in the United States House of Representatives over a proposed federal antilynching bill, black people sitting in the galleries cheered when a representative from Wisconsin rebuked a colleague from Mississippi for blaming lynching on Negro criminality. In response, according to James Weldon Johnson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), white southern politicians shouted from the floor of the House, \"Sit down, niggers.\" In 1938, when the majority leader of the United States Senate, Allen Barkley, placed antilynching legislation on the agenda, Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina (who would later become vice president and secretary of state) faulted the black NAACP official Walter White. Barkley, Byrnes declared, \"can't do anything without talking to that nigger first.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNigger \u003c\/i\u003ewas also a standard element in Senator Huey P. Long's vocabulary, though many blacks appreciated the Louisiana Democrat's notable reluctance to indulge in race baiting. Interviewing \"The Kingfish\" in 1935, Roy Wilkins (working as a journalist in the days before he became a leader of the NAACP) noted that Long used the terms \"nigra,\" \"colored,\" and \"nigger\" with no apparent awareness that that last word would or should be viewed as offensive. By contrast, for Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge, \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e was not simply a designation he had been taught; it was also a tool of demagoguery that he self-consciously deployed. Asked by a white constituent about \"Negroes attending our schools,\" Talmadge happily replied, \"Before God, friend, the niggers will never go to a school which is white while I am governor.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs in Georgia, so in Mississippi, where white judges routinely asked Negro defendants, \"Whose nigger are you?\" Reporting a homicide, the Hattiesburg \u003ci\u003eProgress\u003c\/i\u003e noted: \"Only another dead nigger--that's all.\" Three decades later, the master of ceremonies at a White Citizens Council banquet would conclude the festivities by remarking, \"Throughout the pages of history there is only one third-rate race which has been treated like a second-class race and complained about it--and that race is the American nigger.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNor was nigger confined to the language of local figures of limited influence. Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds referred to Howard University as the \"nigger university.\" President Harry S Truman called Congressman Adam Clayton Powell \"that damned nigger preacher.\" \u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e was also in the vocabulary of Senator, Vice President, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. \"I talk everything over with [my wife],\" he proclaimed on one occasion early in his political career. Continuing, he quipped, \"Of course . . . I have a nigger maid, and I talk my problems over with her, too.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA complete list of prominent whites who have referred at some point or other to blacks demeaningly as niggers would be lengthy indeed. It would include such otherwise disparate figures as Richard Nixon, Edmund Wilson, and Flannery O'Connor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven whites' use of \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e, it should come as no surprise that for many blacks the N-word has constituted a major and menacing presence that has sometimes shifted the course of their lives. Former slaves featured it in their memoirs about bondage. Recalling her lecherous master's refusal to permit her to marry a free man of color, Harriet Jacobs related the following colloquy:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"So you want to be married do you?\" he said, \u003cbr\u003e\"and to a free nigger.\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, sir.\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, I'll soon convince you whether I am your master, or the nigger fellow you honor so highly. If you \u003ci\u003emust \u003c\/i\u003ehave a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNigger\u003c\/i\u003e figures noticeably, too, in Frederick Douglass's autobiography. Re-creating the scene in which his master objected to his being taught to read and write, the great abolitionist imagined that the man might have said, \"If you give a nigger an inch he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master. . . . Learning would \u003ci\u003espoil\u003c\/i\u003e the best nigger in the world.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the years since the Civil War, no one has more searingly dramatized \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e-as-insult than Richard Wright. Anyone who wants to learn in a brief compass what lies behind African American anger and anguish when \u003ci\u003enigger\u003c\/i\u003e is deployed as a slur by whites should read Wright's \u003ci\u003eThe Ethics of Living Jim Crow\u003c\/i\u003e. In this memoir about his life in the South during the teens and twenties of the twentieth century, Wright attacked the Jim Crow regime by showing its ugly manifestations in day-to-day racial interactions. Wright's first job took him to a small optical company in Jackson, Mississippi, where things went smoothly in the beginning. Then Wright made the mistake of asking the seventeen-year-old white youth with whom he worked to tell him more about the business. The youth viewed this sign of curiosity and ambition as an unpardonable affront. Wright narrated the confrontation that followed:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What yuh tryin' t' do, nigger, git smart?\" he asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Naw; I ain' tryin' t' git smart,\" I said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, don't, if yuh know what's good for yuh! . . . Nigger, you think you're \u003ci\u003ewhite\u003c\/i\u003e, don't you?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No sir!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is \u003ci\u003ewhite\u003c\/i\u003e man's work around here, and you better watch yourself.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom then on, the white youth so terrorized Wright that he ended up quitting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt his next job, as a menial worker in a clothing store, Wright saw his boss and his son drag and kick a Negro woman into the store:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLater the woman stumbled out, bleeding, crying, and holding her stomach. . . . When I went to the rear of the store, the boss and his son were washing their hands in the sink. They were chuckling. The floor was bloody and strewn with wisps of hair and clothing. No doubt I must have appeared pretty shocked, for the boss slapped me reassuringly on the back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Boy, that's what we do to niggers when they don't want to pay their bills,\" he said, laughing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlong with intimidation, sex figured in Wright's tales of Negro life under segregationist tyranny. Describing his job as a \"hall-boy\" in a hotel frequented by prostitutes, the writer remembered\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea huge, snowy-skinned blonde [who] took a room on my floor. I was sent to wait upon her. She was in bed with a thick-set man; both were nude and uncovered. She said she wanted some liquor and slid out of bed and waddled across the floor to get her money from a dresser drawer. I watched her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Nigger, what in hell you looking at?\" the white man asked me, raising himself up on his elbows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Nothing,\" I answered, looking miles deep into the black wall of the room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Keep your eyes where they belong if you want to be healthy!\" he said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, sir.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a different evening at this same hotel, Wright was leaving to walk one of the Negro maids home. As they passed by him, the white night watchman wordlessly slapped the maid on her buttock. Astonished, Wright instinctively turned around. His doing so, however, triggered yet another confrontation:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuddenly [the night watchman] pulled his gun and asked: \"Nigger, don't you like it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI hesitated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I asked yuh don't yuh like it?\" he asked again, stepping forward.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes, sir,\" I mumbled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Talk like it then!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh, yes, sir!\" I said with as much heartiness as I could muster.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOutside, I walked ahead of the girl, ashamed to face her. She caught up with me and said: \"Don't be a fool! Yuh couldn't help it!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis watchman boasted of having killed two Negroes in self-defense.","brand":"Pantheon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303873269989,"sku":"NP9780593316528","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593316528.jpg?v=1767733709","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/nigger-isbn-9780593316528","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}