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Who Can Say "Nigger"?...And Other Considerations
NIGGER IS A KEY WORD in the lexicon of race relations and thus an important term in American politics. Cultural literacy demands knowledge of it. Indeed, nigger is such an important term that to be ignorant of its functions, connotations, effects, and even of the way it might be confused with similar sounding but unrelated words, such as "niggardly,"(2) is to make oneself vulnerable to all manner of peril -- the loss of one's equilibrium, one's reputation, one's job, even one's life.
To illuminate the significance of nigger, I analyze an array of disputes. The disputes that I shall address arise from questions such as these: What does nigger mean? What should it mean? Is nigger more, or less, hurtful as a racial epithet than competitors such as "kike," "wop," "wetback," "mick," "chink," or "gook"? Should certain people (say, blacks) be able to use the term in ways forbidden to others (say, whites)? Under what circumstances should relevant testimony about a person's use of the term nigger be excluded from the heating of a jury? Should the law view nigger as a possible provocation that reduces the criminal culpability of a person who responds violently to it? What methods are useful for removing venomous power from words like nigger when they are deployed as weapons of racial insult?
Let's begin with history. Leading etymologists believe that nigger was derived from a Northern English word -- "neger" -- that was itself derived from "Negro," the Spanish word for black.(3) No one knows precisely how it attained its pejorative, abusive meaning. The linguist Robin Lakoff speculates that nigger became a slur when users of the term became aware that it was a mispronunciation of Negro and decided to continue using the mispronunciation as a signal of contempt -- much as individuals sometimes choose to insult others by deliberately mispronouncing their names.(4) Precisely when the term became a slur is unknown. We do know, however, that by the first third of the nineteenth century nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult. In his 1837 treatise on The Condition of the Colored People of the United States; and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them,(5) Hosea Easton, who described himself as "a colored...