A Word That Speaks Volumes

David Pryor called Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troubling Word a “hand grenade of a book” at the IOP Book Club’s inaugural event last Monday in Lowell Junior Common Room. Author and Harvard Law School Professor Randall L. Kennedy was on hand to discuss his views on the changing meaning of the “N-word,” though his opinions were often less explosive than the term itself.

The premise of Kennedy’s book is to illuminate African-American history through the prism of the word “nigger” and to chart the word’s strange and troubling history. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, a word “is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged,” but “the skin of a living thought [that] may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.” Kennedy’s book aims to study these circumstances by following the N-word from its etymological roots, to its shifting definition in the legal system, to its contemporary manifestations in movies and rap.

Kennedy’s attention to the importance of the N-word’s role in African-American history shows his appreciation for the subject’s complexity and demand for nuanced interpretation. To dismiss the word as a one-dimensional insult disregards its deep and loaded history. Kennedy’s book is in many ways an effort to analyze this history and place the deeply stigmatized and tabooed word at the forefront of race-relations dialogue in America. In fact, Kennedy censured what he called the “eradicationist” position, espoused by those who want the N-word systematically eliminated from the American-English lexicon. To deny the usage of the word in any context, Kennedy contends, is to erase the word’s history and, potentially, the literature that captured this history, such as Twain’s oft-cited Adventures of Huck Finn. Similarly, this eradication would endow the word with more destructive power and heighten its taboo. The idea that the elimination of a racist term will eliminate racism itself is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Kennedy offers some controversial solutions to society’s problems with this tenacious word. Using the N-word liberally, he thinks, may soften its offensive blow, a theory propounded by filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Lenny Bruce. This way, speakers can take control of the word’s semantic implications, “owning” and defining it according to a more positive, and self-determined, ideal.

But Kennedy can be unclear about when the N-word is and isn’t appropriate. On the one hand, he suggests that anyone, of any race or gender, should be condemned for using the word in a racist manner. But due to the word’s chameleon-like quality, there still exist contexts in which the word is not racist and yet, according to Kennedy, should not be used.

Consider the example of Central Michigan University’s former basketball coach, Keith Dambrot. When Dambrot, who is white, asked his predominantly African-American players for permission to use the word “nigger” (as they did) to denote toughness, heart and passion, they agreed. But when news of Dambrot’s usage got out, the college administration reproached and then fired him. Kennedy thinks that Dumbrot’s usage was ill-advised, but thinks his being fired was too harsh a sentence. Herein lies the contradiction. If racist intent was not apparent in Dambrot’s use, what else constituted its inappropriateness? Is ignorance or the simplification of the word’s far-reaching implications alone worthy of criticism? And if so, should all speakers, of all races, be aware of these implications before they use the word?

These are questions Kennedy does not address head on. In fact, though one can debate Tarantino or Bruce’s theory that the word’s free use will lead to changed perceptions, or that the word should be used only in full understanding of its connotations, Kennedy’s text does not focus on these ideas.

If anything, Kennedy has created a foundation for further discussion of the word. One student asked Kennedy to respond to accusations that his book’s title was a “sensationalist marketing” scheme, a ploy to garner attention. Kennedy “plead guilty” to the charge that he had chosen a title that would draw readers to the book’s controversial content. But it is important to remember that however unpleasant the word may ring in one’s ears, or however shocking it may appear on the cover of a bestselling book, it remains a crucial element in understanding the full gamut of African-American history.

In fact, the sensation stirred by Kennedy’s book remains not in its opinions, but in the word itself. People continue to be shocked by the N-word because of all the horrific images and implications and history it harbors—a history, Kennedy argues, which must ultimately be recognized and reckoned with.