Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word - Main Discussion

[Carly]

This is one of those books I wanted to be a fan of, but wasn't. I don't think it reads well or brings up much new information beyond what most Americans already know about the word: it is versatile, it has been deemed "okay" to use by some people and not by others, there are many different opinions about its use.

I wanted a more nuanced look at it, not just a litany of examples. I suppose maybe I was looking for an artist's lens rather than a scholar's, so maybe that means others of you go something out of it where I didn't.

Did anything about this book particularly stand out to you, besides the shocking title?

I suppose one of the interesting conversations here is the legality of the word, of its use in court cases and how that will stand the test of time. I suppose for me, policing free speech is a cut-and-dried case: the word itself can't be directly legislated against, as to make words illegal goes against the very identity of the nation and most likely only leads in one Orwellian direction. But I agree with Kennedy regarding it's inclusion in evidence of, say, hate crimes cases, that its status as the nuclear bomb of all words in America matters in our society and therefore in our legal system.

The word itself, though, can never be cut-and-dried. I think we'll be grappling with the kinds of cases Kennedy talks about for a long time.

What do you think?