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NIGGER: THE, STRANGE CAREER OF A TROUBLESOME WORD by Randall Kennedy. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. 226 pp. $22.00.
In his provocative book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy explores various meanings of this contentious and ambiguous word. Kennedy claims that the term "nigger is fascinating precisely because it has been put to a variety of uses and can radiate a wide array of meanings" (p. 34). He notes that words like honky, kike, wetback, and gook do not seem to capture the same attention or create the uneasiness that nigger does. Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor, delves into the history of the word nigger as well as the countless ways and contexts in which the term is now being used by Americans of different ethnic and racial backgrounds.
Kennedy approaches the analysis of this highly controversial word in four detailed chapters. He begins chapter one, "The Protean N-Word," by retracing the origin of nigger, the various ways Americans tend to use the word and why it "generate [s] such powerful reactions" (p. 3). Nigger, Kennedy asserts, is derived from the Latin word nigerfor the color black, and has become part of the vocabulary of all types of people, including those Kennedy describes as "whites high and low" (p. 8). For example, Kennedy cites Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds' reference to Howard University as the "nigger university" and President Harry S. Truman's reference to Congressman Adam Clayton Powell as "that damned nigger preacher" (p. 11). In this same chapter, Kennedy includes personal accounts of...