Review: "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word" By Alex P. Kellogg
Special to BET.com
Feb. 12, 2002-- Perhaps no other insult can be spoken with more malice, or received with more outrage, than "nigger." That said, no other word has been adopted and subverted by an oppressed group so eloquently as nigger. Taking these ideas as points of departure, "Nigger," by Randall Kennedy (Pantheon, January 2002. $38), takes a long, hard look at the N-word, as it is often euphemistically denoted, aiming, as he puts it, to "put a tracer on nigger, report on its use, and assess the controversies to which it gives rise."
Derived from the Latin term for the color black, niger (when exactly the word transformed from racial moniker to racial slur is unknown), by the early 19th century "nigger" was a familiar insult. Since then, as Kennedy exhaustively illustrates, nigger "has seeped into practically every aspect of American culture, from literature to political debates, from cartoons to songs." From well-known nursery rhymes such as "Eeny-meeny-miney-mo! / Catch a nigger by the toe!" to prominent landmarks previously known as Nigger Lake, Niggerhead Hill, or Old Nigger Creek, to the more recent manifestations of nigger in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) (or virtually any hip-hop song made in the last five years); nigger is literally, all over the place. And Kennedy does a great job of not only delineating the vociferous, recorded examples of nigger's use through time (by the likes of Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry S. Truman, and others), but also pointing out that the word's meaning varies by content and context, depending largely on the individual circumstances in which it is used.
Aside from examining nigger in the popular consciousness, "Nigger" is also a careful examination of the history of the word in court, from its earliest recorded appearance in an 1871 Supreme Court ruling to the infamous debate over its inclusion in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
To Kennedy, the death of the politically correct era, which saw attempts to ban words like nigger with so-called hate speech laws, is a sign of progress. The fact that more and more Blacks are using the term openly, regardless of the confusion or haphazard mimicry it elicits among some Whites, or even the backlash it causes from some Blacks, is a further sign of progress to Kennedy. He's happy too that many Whites and other non-Blacks are starting to use the word to refer to each other, in both the positive and negative senses, shedding much of the term's racial specificity. In a sense, he points out, as the meanings and uses of nigger (and its variants) have become more variable, its prominence in the American dialect has revitalized, while the ease of asserting its offensiveness has diminished. Given these facts, Kennedy argues, for "bad and for good, nigger is thus destined to remain with us for many years to come - a reminder of the ironies and dilemmas, the tragedies and glories, of the American experience." Or, put another way, to the question of whether or not nigger is going anywhere, one might aptly reply, "Nigger please!"
Reader's Feedback on the site: http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c3gb1717-2383-1,00.html#boardsAnchor
Feb. 12, 2002-- Perhaps no other insult can be spoken with more malice, or received with more outrage, than "nigger." That said, no other word has been adopted and subverted by an oppressed group so eloquently as nigger. Taking these ideas as points of departure, "Nigger," by Randall Kennedy (Pantheon, January 2002. $38), takes a long, hard look at the N-word, as it is often euphemistically denoted, aiming, as he puts it, to "put a tracer on nigger, report on its use, and assess the controversies to which it gives rise."
Derived from the Latin term for the color black, niger (when exactly the word transformed from racial moniker to racial slur is unknown), by the early 19th century "nigger" was a familiar insult. Since then, as Kennedy exhaustively illustrates, nigger "has seeped into practically every aspect of American culture, from literature to political debates, from cartoons to songs." From well-known nursery rhymes such as "Eeny-meeny-miney-mo! / Catch a nigger by the toe!" to prominent landmarks previously known as Nigger Lake, Niggerhead Hill, or Old Nigger Creek, to the more recent manifestations of nigger in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) (or virtually any hip-hop song made in the last five years); nigger is literally, all over the place. And Kennedy does a great job of not only delineating the vociferous, recorded examples of nigger's use through time (by the likes of Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry S. Truman, and others), but also pointing out that the word's meaning varies by content and context, depending largely on the individual circumstances in which it is used.
Aside from examining nigger in the popular consciousness, "Nigger" is also a careful examination of the history of the word in court, from its earliest recorded appearance in an 1871 Supreme Court ruling to the infamous debate over its inclusion in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
To Kennedy, the death of the politically correct era, which saw attempts to ban words like nigger with so-called hate speech laws, is a sign of progress. The fact that more and more Blacks are using the term openly, regardless of the confusion or haphazard mimicry it elicits among some Whites, or even the backlash it causes from some Blacks, is a further sign of progress to Kennedy. He's happy too that many Whites and other non-Blacks are starting to use the word to refer to each other, in both the positive and negative senses, shedding much of the term's racial specificity. In a sense, he points out, as the meanings and uses of nigger (and its variants) have become more variable, its prominence in the American dialect has revitalized, while the ease of asserting its offensiveness has diminished. Given these facts, Kennedy argues, for "bad and for good, nigger is thus destined to remain with us for many years to come - a reminder of the ironies and dilemmas, the tragedies and glories, of the American experience." Or, put another way, to the question of whether or not nigger is going anywhere, one might aptly reply, "Nigger please!"
Reader's Feedback on the site: http://www.bet.com/articles/0,,c3gb1717-2383-1,00.html#boardsAnchor
