Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - with a New Introduction by the Author

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The 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" (The Washington Post).

In 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.

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.

Consider 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.

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.

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.

Kennedy 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.

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.

Review

“Provocative. . . . engaging and informative.” —The New York Times

“Should be required reading. . . . This little book deserves to be read especially if we seek better understanding of ourselves and others.” –The Dallas Morning News

“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.”–Philadelphia Inquirer

“A detailed, well-researched book. . . . Kennedy boils centuries of usage–in conversation, literature, legal proceedings–down to the most pertinent and instructive.” –San Francisco Chronicle

From the Back Cover

It's "the nuclear bomb of racial epithets," a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is "nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it.
Should blacks be able to use "nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves? With a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial, Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence.

About the Author

RANDALL KENNEDY 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

The Protean N-Word

How should nigger be defined? Is it a part of the American cultural inheritance that warrants preservation? Why does nigger generate such powerful reactions? Is it a more hurtful racial epithet than insults such as kike, wop, wetback, mick, chink, and gook? Am I wrongfully offending the sensibilities of readers right now by spelling out nigger instead of using a euphemism such as N-word? Should blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law view nigger as 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 nigger of destructiveness? In the pages that follow, I will pursue these and related questions. I will put a tracer on nigger, report on its use, and assess the controversies to which it gives rise. I have invested energy in this endeavor because nigger 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.

Let's turn first to etymology. Nigger is derived from the Latin word for the color black, niger. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it did not originate as a slur but took on a derogatory connotation over time. Nigger 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 niger appeared in what the dictionary describes as "dignified argumentation" such as Samuel Sewall's denunciation of slavery, The Selling of Joseph. No one knows precisely when or how niger turned derisively into nigger and attained a pejorative meaning. We do know, however, that by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult.

In A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the United States: and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them (1837), Hosea Easton wrote that nigger "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 nigger. Adults reprimanded them for being "worse than niggers," for being "ignorant as niggers," for having "no more credit than niggers"; they disciplined them by telling them that unless they behaved they would be carried off by "the old nigger" or made to sit with "niggers" or consigned to the "nigger seat," which was, of course, a place of shame.

Nigger 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."

Throughout American history, nigger has cropped up in children's rhymes, perhaps the best known of which is

Eeny-meeny-miney-mo!
Catch a nigger by the toe!
If he hollers, let him go!
Eeny-meeny-miney-mo!

But there are scores of others as well, including

Nigger, nigger, never die,
Black face and shiny eye.

And then there is:

Teacher, teacher, don't whip me!
Whip that nigger behind that tree!
He stole honey and I stole money.
Teacher, teacher, wasn't that funny?

Today, 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:

Q. What do you call a nigger boy riding a bike?
A. Thief!

Q. Why do niggers wear high-heeled shoes?
A. So their knuckles won't scrape the ground!

Q. What did God say when he made the first nigger?
A. "Oh, shit!"

Q. What do niggers and sperm have in common?
A. Only one in two million works!

Q. Why do decent white folk shop at nigger yard sales?
A. To get all their stuff back, of course!

Q. What's the difference between a pothole and a nigger?
A. You'd swerve to avoid a pothole, wouldn't you?

Q. How do you make a nigger nervous?
A. Take him to an auction.

Q. How do you get a nigger to commit suicide?
A. Toss a bucket of KFC into traffic.

Q. How do you keep niggers out of your backyard?
A. Hang one in the front yard.

Q. How do you stop five niggers from raping a white woman?
A. Throw them a basketball.

Nigger 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 nigger. 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."

During 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."

Nigger was 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, nigger 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."

As in Georgia, so in Mississippi, where white judges routinely asked Negro defendants, "Whose nigger are you?" Reporting a homicide, the Hattiesburg Progress 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."

Nor 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." Nigger 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."

A 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.

Given whites' use of nigger, 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:

"So you want to be married do you?" he said,
"and to a free nigger."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I'll soon convince you whether I am your master, or the nigger fellow you honor so highly. If you must have a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves."

Nigger 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 spoil the best nigger in the world."

In the years since the Civil War, no one has more searingly dramatized nigger-as-insult than Richard Wright. Anyone who wants to learn in a brief compass what lies behind African American anger and anguish when nigger is deployed as a slur by whites should read Wright's The Ethics of Living Jim Crow. 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:

"What yuh tryin' t' do, nigger, git smart?" he asked.

"Naw; I ain' tryin' t' git smart," I said.

"Well, don't, if yuh know what's good for yuh! . . . Nigger, you think you're white, don't you?"

"No sir!"

"This is white man's work around here, and you better watch yourself."

From then on, the white youth so terrorized Wright that he ended up quitting.

At 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:

Later 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.

"Boy, that's what we do to niggers when they don't want to pay their bills," he said, laughing.

Along 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

a 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.

"Nigger, what in hell you looking at?" the white man asked me, raising himself up on his elbows.

"Nothing," I answered, looking miles deep into the black wall of the room.

"Keep your eyes where they belong if you want to be healthy!" he said.

"Yes, sir."

On 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:

Suddenly [the night watchman] pulled his gun and asked: "Nigger, don't you like it?"

I hesitated.

"I asked yuh don't yuh like it?" he asked again, stepping forward.

"Yes, sir," I mumbled.

"Talk like it then!"

"Oh, yes, sir!" I said with as much heartiness as I could muster.

Outside, 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!"

This watchman boasted of having killed two Negroes in self-defense.

Review:

4.7 out of 5

93.85% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and well-written, take a look

c. · January 10, 2017

I liked the idea that someone would write a book with this title. Not because it would shock or offend, but because this word (which I'm not going to use in my review) to this day has the ability to shock, injure and horrify nearly everyone and some of its power really ought to be drained away. This book is a good place to start. The usage of the word is traced from its origins right up to its usage In the present day. I have always felt that hearing 'grown-ups' using a ridiculous phrase like 'the n-word' makes them sound about three years old. Like the way we kids used to describe 'dirty' or swear words in hushed tones. It's sounds pathetic. I certainly don't advocate the open usage of the word, but a thorough understanding of its origins and usage over the centuries just might allow us to take it down from its pedestal and throw it in the trash where it belongs. Lenny Bruce used to do a bit, on stage back in the late 50s and early 60s, that tried to show that keeping this word in the shadows only allowed it to keep its bizarre 'power' over people. Check it out, it's an eye-opener.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast!

B. · September 27, 2024

It came a lot faster than expected and in great condition.

4.0 out of 5 stars very interesting reading

M.R. · January 22, 2024

very interesting reading

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for everyone

W.L. · August 31, 2023

I got the first edition back in 2002 and it helped me to conduct race relations classes in both civilian and military jobs Mr Kennedy's book offers insight especially now 20 yrs later as we still encounter issues with the N word I am a biracial baby boomer Puerto Rican and German grew up in the depressed areas on NYC but I survived Racism is our ugliest disease of the mind anyone can have But it has to changeWe cannot change the past it is what it is. However we can redirect our attention by teaching the youth about the errors made that still affect us to our present time and attempt to redirect their thinking about theses things. At the same time we the older generations should also change those around us which makes it a sort of pincer movement from the top and bottom of this disease and eradicate it.Many people in our society, regardless of race creed sexual orientation religion and so on has a part to play. And, as we all can see many of those individual groups are intelligent teachers government officials actors/actresses. Musicians, song writers, medical personnel and so one . Not the individuals spoken about from other individuals with deep rooted prejudice, racist ideologies.We are in the 21st century. We are all decent human beings that really need to treat each other on equal ground. That's we we have the rules and laws that exist today in an effort to overcome and reduce the crazy ideas that are negative towards others. And the laws attempt to fairly treat all individuals equally. I am not speaking about Utopia. I am speaking of the ideals we were taught as children that somewhere along the way got lost.I enjoyed Mr Kennedy's first book 20 yrs ago and I enjoyed this anniversary edition with equal delight. I know no one is perfect but in both of Mr Kennedy's books then and know the message is quite simple. We as honest faithful people to our creator must cease the hatred and correct our attitudes about people we don't know a lot about or don't understand. And I mean every person not leaving anyone out. I urge people to stop take a bit of time to get and read this book. Tell your family and friends about this book. It will help everyone realize an ages old problem for what it really is. Please read this book and try to help make a change' Thank you for your time

5.0 out of 5 stars American history lessons

W.b.g. · April 25, 2024

I had purchased this book when it was first published, I was working ar the palm beach Florida school Royal Palm on Lawrence Avenue, I left it on a table went to men's room returned and it my book was gone, I hope that it has given insight to whoever "borrowed " it.

5.0 out of 5 stars The best piece of historical writing on language and race

D.S. · March 7, 2015

Dr. Randall Kennedy is a proffesor and historian at Harvard University and his book on the history of the most inflamatory word in the English language is a brilliant study on America, race relations and how clear it is that human rights is still America's greatest challenge. The word is so inflamatory that the editorial computers at Bolo Vine will not publish this review if I mention the title. Kennedy addresses the use of the word in Rap music, among the African American community as well as it's early uses centuries ago and how slavery has made it far worse than other racial slurs. The book is not at all dull. One might expect a Harvard dissertation but that's not at all the case, whether he is discussing Jim Crow or Tupac. The end result is a book that everyone must read and no one will be sorry he did.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read

E. · June 20, 2021

The word is controversial and severely misunderstood. This book provides a scholarly analysis of the origins of the word, its various forms, ways it has been used, and ways it is still used - for better or worse. I would have gladly used and cited this as a reference for Psychology, Sociology, History, Linguistics classes I had taken years ago. This is an excellent source of history and context of use for anyone's awareness.

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth the book, but seller appears careless

T.O.G. · December 25, 2020

Arrived with scratches on the cover. It was in plastic and the text was otherwise intact, but the seller clearly doesn't handle books respectfully. This book is out of print in the classic sense of it not having a formal reprint. You'd think it would mean something to the former owner. Truth told, a partial refund would be nice.

If you are open to understanding, you should read this book.

P. · January 12, 2020

A great resource for those who wish to learn. If you are not open to learning, and changing your position on this topic, then don't bother to read this book.

Very interesting reading

C. · January 3, 2019

Very interesting reading. Insightful and worth a read.

An Interesting book!

A.C. · September 1, 2019

Really liked the book. Thought provoking.

Four Stars

S.F. · April 15, 2018

This book arrived on time and was used for research. Thank you

Arrived on time!

A. · January 15, 2019

Great Book!

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Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - with a New Introduction by the Author

Name: Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - with a New Introduction by the Author
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