When I told a coworker I was writing a review of Randall Kennedy’s new book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (Pantheon, $22), he cleared his throat uncomfortably, frowned, and said, “You really do like stepping in it, don’t you?” “Hey,” I replied, “Think about what Kennedy’s going through.” He furrowed his brow and said, “But he’s black, right?” “Absolutely,” I reassured him. “He’s a professor of law at Harvard. Educated at Princeton and Yale. Very grounded.” My Puerto Rican friend still shook his head. For him, a book called Nigger is merely provocation.
Kennedy, however, is very adept at playing with the fire of this word. “Nigger” stops the conversation cold. Bottled lightning. “Nigger” is anti-discourse, and those who think they can handle it because they are free of personal animus are gravely mistaken. “Nigger” is a term that has such a history that only the most adept or the most naive can use it with impunity. Even Eminem knows better (and, perhaps, he should give a word up to Chris Rock). But Kennedy just lays it out like he would a set of facts in a lawsuit. Very matter-of-fact, very detached. He traces the history, the etymology of the word. Pop culture and literature are covered from Richard Wright to Rock. So, too, the legal trail and political correctness and ironic humor. He dissects the fighting word’s issue and demonstrates with an unerring and dispassionate logic that the whole of the problem rests on power, abuse of power, and re-claiming of power irrespective of the white man’s point of view or high moral tone.
He does this so casually you might not even notice. The writing is so blissfully free of postmodern critique-ese that it makes a perfect text for a sophomore sociology class. Kennedy is so even-handed, so temperate that sometimes the words threaten to float off the page. A poet he isn’t, but such a calculated, easy-to-read approach is most appropriate; the subject alone keeps everything taut and dangerous.
This article appears in February 15 • 2002.