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Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word Paperback – January 14, 2003
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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?
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publication dateJanuary 14, 2003
- Dimensions5.24 x 0.59 x 7.95 inches
- ISBN-100375713719
- ISBN-13978-0375713712
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“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 Inside Flap
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.
From the Back Cover
“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
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (January 14, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0375713719
- ISBN-13 : 978-0375713712
- Item Weight : 8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.24 x 0.59 x 7.95 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #525,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #790 in Black & African American History (Books)
- #1,467 in Discrimination & Racism
- #1,792 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customers find the book informative and interesting. They describe the writing as well-written and easy to read. However, opinions differ on the word choice - some consider it a strong title and well-researched, while others feel it's controversial and misunderstood.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book interesting and entertaining. They say it's a good place to start and not dull. The book doesn't take long to read and has humor and things to think about.
"...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...." Read more
"very interesting reading" Read more
"...has made it far worse than other racial slurs. The book is not at all dull...." Read more
"This book didn't take long to read. There was some humor and some things to think about." Read more
Customers find the book insightful and interesting. They say it's a great read on an interesting subject matter that makes them think as they explore the word. The book provides an interesting history lesson on its origin and social use.
"...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..." Read more
"...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..." Read more
"This book didn't take long to read. There was some humor and some things to think about." Read more
"...Deeply empowering, i HAVE LEARNED a lot...." Read more
Customers find the book's writing quality good and entertaining. They describe it as an easy read and the best historical writing on language and race.
"...I found it to be highly readable...." Read more
"...Very well written and entertaining, I feel like the man who wrote this book could write a book about anything and it would still be well written." Read more
"...It was in plastic and the text was otherwise intact, but the seller clearly doesn't handle books respectfully...." Read more
"Interesting and informative read by a brilliant writer." Read more
Customers have different views on the word choice. Some find it tough, strong, and well-researched. Others find it inflamatory, controversial, and misunderstood. The title seems gratuitous to some readers, while others dislike the writing style.
"...I give this book 5 Stars for the wit and courage in which the author displayed in tackling such a nuclear subject...." Read more
"...human rights is still America's greatest challenge. The word is so inflamatory that the editorial computers at Amazon Vine will not publish..." Read more
"...The material was well researched and most certainly worth the read." Read more
"The word is controversial and severely misunderstood...." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2017I 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.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2023I 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 change
We 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
- Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2024very interesting reading
- Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2024It came a lot faster than expected and in great condition.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2015Dr. 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 Amazon 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.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2024I 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.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2021The 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.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2014In light of some recent occurrences, I was prompted to do what I had intended to do many years ago; read this book. The Travon Martin trial and recent debate on banning the use of the N-word in the NFL spurred me to read this book.
I found it to be highly readable. I give this book 5 Stars for the wit and courage in which the author displayed in tackling such a nuclear subject.
I am making this required reading for my children who are sometimes subjected to this word as an insult by Anglo classmates.
Thanks for providing this tool for education.
Top reviews from other countries
PaulineReviewed in Canada on January 12, 20205.0 out of 5 stars If you are open to understanding, you should read this book.
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.
CherylReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 20195.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting reading
Very interesting reading. Insightful and worth a read.
Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on September 1, 20195.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting book!
Really liked the book. Thought provoking.
Sandra FletcherReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 20184.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
This book arrived on time and was used for research. Thank you
AshleyReviewed in Canada on January 15, 20195.0 out of 5 stars Arrived on time!
Great Book!






