I am glad I didn’t purchase this book, as I had planned, but found Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy at the library instead. This book was a hard read. It was negative, I think it could have been organized better and I learned very little more than what I already knew about the N-word. The book was only 176 pages long and it took me forever to read because I just didn’t want to.
The word Nigger is derived from the Latin word for the color black; niger. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Nigger was not originally meant as a negative term but somewhere between 1619 when John Rolf recorded in his journal the first shipment of Africans to Virginia, and in 1837, when 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, Hosea Easton wrote that nigger “is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon [Blacks] as an inferior race.” Chapter 1
In 1985 social psychologists tested groups of White college students judging Black and White debaters. After the debates people nearby spoke of the Black contestants as niggers, or in a non-racial way, but negative way, and some made no comment at all. The psychologists found that the speakers that were slurred tended to have lower scores than the other debaters. This led them to believe this could have an effect on parole board hearings, promotion committee meetings, and jury deliberations. Chapter 2
Three Theories About the Use of the N-Word:
- The long and ugly history of the white racist and subordination of Black Americans should disqualify Whites from using this word.
- The equity earned through oppression grants Blacks cultural ownership rights so they should be allowed to monopolize on the slur’s cultural capital.
- White people do not have enough intimate knowledge of Black culture to use the N-word properly.
In one part of the book there are lists of rhymes and songs that were popular at some point in time. I was raised in a white family and in a white town. My parents were careful about what I watched on TV. I didn’t hear or see the N-word until I was old enough to look it up in the dictionary. I was surprised when I saw a familiar rhyme in this book but it had a word in it that was wrong. I never liked this rhyme because I wouldn’t want to catch anything by it’s toe. I didn’t want to hurt anything and I imagine that it would hurt to be caught by your toe. Sometimes it is fun to be “little girls” my wife and I asked her about this rhyme, hoping she could remember the word:
Eany-Meeny-Miney-Mo!
Catch a nigger by the toe!
If he hollers, let him go!
Eany-Meeny-Miney-Mo!
When she got to “nigger” her whole countenance changed as if someone had stepped on her shoulders. When she saw the shock in my face, she said “Tiger.”
My wife wasn’t raised in a white family or a white town. I forget that sometimes. I wish I hadn’t asked her about that rhyme because obviously someone had used those words to demean her and take her beautiful smile off her face. Now I really hate that rhyme.
On a side note, I never forgot what that dictionary at the school library said the meaning of the word nigger was: a four legged animal. I can’t find a dictionary that says that anymore.
In our home we don’t use the N-word unless we are talking about the use of it. We understand that some black households believe that they have the right to the ownership of it but in the mixing of cultures it too easy to misread a room. We agree that using the word nigger stops us from moving forward. It is important to know our history, learn from it and to not hide our history, but we don’t need to warp it and wear it like a blanket filled with holes and rot.
“The persistent viability of the N-word in the Black community, is a scar from centuries of cultural racism.” Professor Halford, H Fairchild, Chapter 3
I got this book at the Longview Public Library. You can get your own copy of Nigger The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy on Amazon.
Read My Review on GoodReads:
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a hard read. I felt like it could have been organized better. The topic, itself, was hard and I don’t really feel like I learned anything.
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