Nigger: The Strange Career Of A Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

say, however, any version of a word that his black hip-hop colleagues employ constantly as a matter of course; the nonchalance with which he tosses around epithets such as
bitch
and
faggot
does not extend to
nigger.
“That word,” he insists, “is not even in my vocabulary.” 104
    Eminem is certainly following a prudent course, for many people, white and black alike, disapprove of a white person saying “nigger” under virtually any circumstance. “When we call each other ‘nigger’ it means no harm,” Ice Cube remarks. “But if a white person uses it, it's something different, it's a racist word.” 105 Professor Michael Eric Dyson likewise asserts that whites must know and stay in their racial place when it comes to saying “nigger.” He writes that “most white folk attracted to black culture know better than to cross a line drawn in the sand of racial history.
Nigger
has never been cool when spit from white lips.” 106
    The race line that Dyson applauds, however, is a specious divide. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a white person saying “nigger,” just as there is nothing necessarily wrong with a black person saying it. What should matter is the context in which the word is spoken—the speaker's aims, effects, alternatives. To condemn whites who use the N-word without regard to context is simply to make a fetish of
nigger.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
(Uncle Tom's Cabin)
, Mark Twain
(Huckleberry Finn)
, William Dean Howells
(An Imperative Duty)
, Edward Sheldon
(The Nigger)
, Eugene O'Neill
(All God's Chillun)
, Lillian Smith
(Strange Fruit)
, Sinclair Lewis
(Kingsblood Royal)
, Joyce Carol Oates
(Them)
, E. L. Doctorow
(Ragtime)
, John Grisham
(A Time to Kill)
, and numerous other white writers have unveiled
nigger
-as-insult in order to dramatize and condemn racism's baleful presence.
    In 1967 , President Lyndon Baines Johnson decided toappoint an African American to the Supreme Court for the first time in American history. First on Johnson's list of candidates was Thurgood Marshall—“Mr. Civil Rights,” the hero of
Brown v. Board of Education
and, of course, the man he ended up putting on the Court. But before he announced his selection, Johnson asked an assistant to identify some other possible candidates. The aide mentioned A. Leon Higginbotham, whom Johnson had appointed to the federal trial bench. Reportedly, the president dismissed the suggestion with the comment “The only two people who have ever heard of Judge Higgin-botham are you and his momma. When I appoint a nigger to the [Supreme Court], I want everyone to know he's a nigger.” 107 Was the use of
nigger
in this context a venting of racial prejudice? Maybe. Johnson had been raised in a thoroughly racist environment, had supported racist policies for a long period, and, as we have seen, casually used
nigger
as part of his private vocabulary before he became president. On this particular occasion, however, it seems likely that he was merely seeking to highlight the racial exclusion against which he was acting, parodying the old regime even as he sought to reform it. If this is an accurate assessment of the situation, I see nothing wrong with what Johnson said, and I applaud what he did. Can a relationship between a black person and a white one be such that the white person should properly feel authorized, at least within the confines of that relationship, to use the N-word? For me the answer is yes. Carl Van Vechten, for instance, wrote of “niggers” in correspondence with his friend Langston Hughes, 108 and Hughes did not object (though he did once write that
nigger
was a red flag for all Negroes). 109
Should
Hughes have objected? No. Van Vechten, a key supporter of the Harlem Renaissance, had shown time and again that he abhorred racial prejudice, would do what he could to improve the fortunes of African Americans, and treasured his black friends. It was against this backdrop of achieved trust that Hughes (and other black