Nigger - The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word [Hardcover]

Randall Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 8, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0375421726 | ISBN-13: 978-0375421723 | Edition: 1

Nigger: it is arguably the most consequential social insult in American history, though, at the same time, a word that reminds us of “the ironies and dilemmas, tragedies and glories of the American experience.” In this tour de force, distinguished Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy—author of the highly acclaimed Race, Crime, and the Law— “put[s] a tracer on nigger,” to identify how it has been used and by whom, while analyzing the controversies to which it has given rise.

With unprecedented candor and insight Kennedy explores such questions as: How should nigger be defined? Is it, as some have declared, necessarily more hurtful than other racial epithets? Do blacks have a right to use nigger even as others do not? Should the law view nigger baiting as a provocation strong enough to reduce the culpability of a person who responds violently to it? Should a person be fired from his or her job for saying nigger? How might the destructiveness of nigger be assuaged?

To be ignorant of the meanings and effects of nigger, says Kennedy, is to render oneself vulnerable to all manner of peril. This book brilliantly and sensitively addresses that concern.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nigger is Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy's ornate, lively monograph on what he calls the "paradigmatic" racial slur in the English language. A neutral noun in the 17th century, nigger had, by 1830, become an "influential" insult. Kennedy traces the word's history in literature, song, film, politics, sports, everyday speech, and the courtroom. He also discusses its plastic, contradictory, and volatile place in contemporary American society. Should it be eradicated from dictionaries and the language? Should it be, somehow, regulated? What is the significance of its emergence among some blacks as a term with "undertones of warmth and good will"? Do blacks have a historical right to its use or does that place the term under a "protectionist pall"? With courage and grave measure Kennedy has, in effect, created a forum for discussion of the word he calls a "reminder of the ironies and dilemmas, the tragedies and glories, of the American experience." --H. O'Billovitch

From Publishers Weekly

The word is paradigmatically ugly, racist and inflammatory. But is it different when Ice Cube uses it in a song than when, during the O.J. Simpson trial, Mark Fuhrman was accused of saying it? What about when Lenny Bruce uses it to "defang" it by sheer repetition? Or when Mark Twain uses it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to make an antiracist statement? Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School and noted legal scholar, has produced an insightful and highly provocative book that raises vital questions about the relationship between language, politics, social norms and how society and culture confront racism. Drawing on a wide range of historical, legal and cultural instances Harry S. Truman calling Adam Clayton Powell "that damned nigger preacher"; Title VII court cases in which the use of the word was proof of condoning a "racially hostile work environment"; Quentin Tarantino's liberal use of the word in his films Kennedy repeatedly shows not only the complicated cultural history of the word, but how its meaning, intent and even substance change in context. Smart, well argued and never afraid of facing serious, difficult and painful questions in an unflinching and unsentimental manner, this is an important work of cultural and political criticism. As Kennedy notes in closing: "For bad or for good, nigger is... destined to remain with us for the foreseeable future a reminder of the ironies and dilemmas, the tragedies and glories, of the American experience." (Jan. 22)Forecast: This may be the book that reignites larger debates over race eclipsed by September 11. Look for a bestselling run and huge talk show and magazine coverage as the Afghanistan news cycle continues to slow; the book had already been the subject of two New York Times stories by early January.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421726
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421723
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #573,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Exploring the Strange Life of a Complex Word March 1, 2002

By Cheryl D. Fields

Format:Hardcover

As someone who has spent nearly a decade writing about race relations in the U.S., I couldn't read this book fast enough.

Kennedy offers a well-timed examination of a word that appears to be experiencing a revival of public usage. I didn't agree with all of his conclusions, but the book certainly provokes critical thought. I especially appreciated the section that lays out how the word has been considered by the U.S. courts.

This book should be mandatory reading for all Americans. It is a worthy addition to any to high school or college social studies syllabus, and a good choice for book clubs that welcome heated debate.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to open minds February 25, 2005

By Kevin J. Lang

Format:Paperback

What I expected was some sort of "Angry black man' book. What was interesting is that he let the facts speak for themselves; keeping a lot of his personal views out of it. His writing style definitely revealed a bad taste in his mouth but he kept true to why he was writing this. I read this cover to cover (repeating a chapter or 4) with in a week. Normally I read 3 books at a time but this one demanded my attention. I read that a lot of people find this book inadequate. If they want to think so - fine. However, no single 208 page book is going to be able to nail this subject down perfectly. He had made his point profoundly and left a person wanting more; which is a sign of a good author.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars I wish I could read the book he didn't write ... October 9, 2011

By Wendell Ricketts

Format:Paperback

If the question is scholarship and clarity, no fault can be found with Randall Kennedy's [N-word]: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. And if that is so, what makes Kennedy's book so ultimately unsatisfying? Perhaps it is the sense that Kennedy, who is eternally fair-minded (at times, perhaps, even to a fault), never quite seems to get his arms entirely around his topic. Indeed, if Kennedy is always rational in pronouncing his phlegmatic judgments on various famous and infamous uses of the "troublesome" word, the fact is that his reasons for considering one episode defensible and identifying another as certifiably hateful and racist are not entirely coherent. To say it another way, if the reader were to ask Kennedy to define when, by whom, and under what circumstances "[N-word]" can be deployed legitimately, it is doubtful that he could express a practical philosophy, even in the broadest of terms. Or to put the matter in still other words, Kennedy is just like many of the rest of us: appalled by the use of the word in contexts in which it is clearly intended to injure, more than occasionally troubled by its prevalence in everyday discourse, ambivalent about its modern-day dispersal as a (quite literal) shibboleth, and intellectually muddled over how to confront the word in its undeniable position as both linguistic fingerprint and American literary instrument. But if that is the case, what purpose does Kennedy's book actually serve? Those who have spent any time at all thinking about the word and its uses (and, by extension, about American-style racism) won't find, in [N-word], much they didn't already know; those who haven't considered the topic are unlikely to read such a book; and those looking for legitimation and permission (it is, after all, a black man saying that even white people sometimes have the right to say "[N-word]") will go away with their oversimplifications intact. In fairness to Kennedy and his obvious gravitas, perhaps we are meant to content ourselves with just what his subtitle--The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word--suggests: a linguistic-historical review. The major disappointment of [N-word], however, is that, having spent 200 pages laying the perfect groundwork from which to launch a potentially enlightening discussion, Kennedy closes the book. One suspects that a writer and thinker with Kennedy's clear admiration for scholarly exactitude might have provided both significant insight and indispensable reflection on the matter, but he rarely goes beneath the surface. We cannot know whether Kennedy's courage failed him or whether he simply lost interest in the subject, but [N-word] is one of those cases in which the reader has every right to regret the book that wasn't written. (P.S. As if to underscore some of the points Kennedy makes, Amazon refused to post this review with the actual title word in it - that word is on Amazon's "bad word" list and triggers an automatic rejection of the review. That is, quite frankly, exactly the kind of stupidity that Kennedy takes aim at.)