The Brouhaha over the Word 'Nigger'

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes[i]

A book written by Randall Kennedy has gotten some attention [ii] in the aftermath of the mad ravings by comedian Michael Richards after his stand-up routine at a comedy club in Los Angeles was interrupted by African American hecklers.

As has been widely reported, Richards used the word nigger and racist-hate phrases to damn the men who were taunting him during his act the evening of Nov. 17 at The Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard. Subsequently, Richards apologized several times, including to the public via satellite on the David Letterman show and directly to the two audience members he had insulted.

In a spinoff effort, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Rev. Jesse Jackson and black comedian Paul Mooney [who was frequently making use of the word in his act] held a news conference at The Laugh Factory ten days after Richards’ hate tirade calling for a complete cessation of use of the word by everyone.

The brouhaha has brought attention to the word nigger, the curious place it holds in the English language, and the problem of what’s to be done with it. In his 2002 book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Kennedy sagely reports on the word’s history, how it has been used as a stinging insult up to the present day, and its interesting multiplicity of uses in the black community. Also, Kennedy offers quite a bit of background on the word’s use in literature and the fascinating legal history of nigger, considered “the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.” [iii]

I found Kennedy’s book to be wonderful, Integral, calmly reportorial and necessary. Only a book on the narrow topic of that one word and with the seemingly brazen title Kennedy gave it could forthrightly pull together all the disparate, stigmatized and shunned information it has for the benefit of a general readership.

I’m a fairly smart, somewhat worldly, middle-aged white guy, but I came to the subject with no prior knowledge of nigger beyond what you could find in a two-pound college dictionary. I knew the word’s roots come from the days of slavery when white’s treatment of blacks was casually and publicly extremely cruel and dehumanizing. And I know from films and the work of young male rap and hip-hop artists that black youth use the word casually and in a mostly friendly way amongst themselves.

I was surprised to learn of the frequency and complicated uses the word has in the black community, outside earshot of whites. Kennedy, who was born in 1954, tells us when he was growing up family and friends of his of all ages would use the word -- or phrases containing the word -- in ways that could either be highly admiring or highly derogatory. “Bad nigger” could refer to someone who could stand up to white supremacy or it could refer to a black thief. “Acting like niggers” could mean misbehaving in one context, or bravely speaking up in behalf of your race in other contexts. These usages were exclusive to the black world; it was not welcomed, as it still is not, for whites to use the word or phrases in those ways or in any way.

A good chunk of Kennedy’s book relates to circumstances where the word relates to court cases. Others might find that this section is the draggy part of the book, but for me it was the most interesting. Certainly, there are extreme cases of injustice in what Kennedy tells us, but there are, too, increasingly, over time, cases where the judiciary gets it, appreciating the unique inflammatory nature of the word, but also showing a willingness to drill down to untangle and understand rather complicated situations where the intent of a user of the word is something other than to incite discord.

While I will defer to the greater black community’s more-informed and more-sensitized judgment as to what is to be done with the word nigger [Should we endeavor to make the word disappear as Bill Cosby, Mooney, Waters and Jackson advocate? Or, should we all hope that frequent and fully-public use of the word in a non-infammatory way might defang it, as Lenny Bruce advocated in the 50’s?], I do like how Kennedy sums up his third chapter:

Some entertainers who openly use nigger reject Cosby’s politics of respectability, which counsels African Americans to mind their manners and mouths in the presence of whites. This group of performers doubts the efficacy of seeking to burnish the image of African Americans in the eyes of white folk. Some think that the racial perceptions of most whites are beyond changing; others believe that whatever marginal benefits a politics of respectability may yield are not worth the psychic cost of giving up or diluting cultural rituals that blacks enjoy. This latter attitude is effectively expressed by the remark “I don’t give a fuck.” These entertainers don’t care whether whites find nigger upsetting. They don’t care whether whites are confused by blacks’ use of the term. And they don’t care whether whites who hear blacks using the N-word think that African Americans lack self-respect. The black comedians and rappers who use and enjoy nigger care principally, perhaps exclusively, about what they themselves think, desire, and enjoy – which is part of their allure. Many people (including myself) are drawn to these performers despite their many faults because, among other things, they exhibit a bracing independence. They eschew boring conventions, including the one that maintains, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that nigger can mean only one thing. [iv]

Finally, a rather obvious issue I haven’t seen discussed: How is it that in the 21st Century we all rather non-decerningly accept that there is a horribly degrading word for the offspring of slaves – when there should be no shame in that – whereas, there is no disgrace conferred on the offspring of slave owners!?

Certainly, I don’t see how the legacy of slavery should be the guilt-wracked burden of the great-great-great grandsons and –daughters of slaves or slave masters. But clearly nigger should be fading away as a provocative term. I mean, I understand that if a white racist says the word in anger with the clear implication that it is meant in a mean, threatening way, then I see how the subject of the taunt would feel castigated and attacked and be enraged. But this primary meaning of the word should be fading, relieving the word nigger of its powerful toxicity.

Ultimately, shouldn’t nigger come to be taken by blacks in the way whites disregard a taunt of honky? According to Kennedy, quoting a dictionary, honky came into currency in the middle 60s as a derogatory term blacks use in reference to whites. But honky isn’t inflammatory, precisely because whites don’t attach much if any meaning to it.

Writes Kennedy, “[T]here is much to be gained by allowing people of all backgrounds to yank nigger away from white supremacists, to subvert its ugliest denotation, and to convert the N-word from a negative into a positive appellation.”

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[i] Randall Kennedy uses this wonderful -- and by coincidence dead-on appropriate -- Holmes quote to sum up both the introduction and first chapter in Nigger. Holmes used the quoted words in the text of a Supreme Court decision he wrote in 1918, Towne v. Eisner. I think it’s interesting that the specific word that Holmes was referring to "as the skin of a living thought" was income. Holmes was making the point that income, as it was referred to in the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, did not have the same meaning as income referred to in the Income Tax Act of October 3, 1913. Sage and poetic philosophizing in a ruling on tax law. Go figure.

[ii] Out of 7,000 mentions of Michael Richards in a search in Google News on December 10th, 64 – nearly 1% -- refer to Kennedy’s book.

[iii] Kennedy uses this quote without attribution on page 139 of the Vantage paperback edition. From a Google search, I find its source is Chrisopher Darden, prosecutor of O.J. Simpson, who is quoted in an ariticle in 1995 – during the time of the trial – in the L. A. Times.

[iv] From pages 134-135 in the 2003 First Vantage paperback re-issue of Nigger.

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