Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

Later, in his autobiography, Johnson would assert that “most of the Negroes who condemned Nigger Heaven did not read it; they were estopped by the title.”

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Progress, however, begets new problems, and our subject is no exception. The very conditions that have helped to stigmatize nigger have also been conducive to the emergence of certain troubling tendencies. Among these latter are unjustified deception, overeagerness to detect insult, the repression of good uses of nigger, and the overly harsh punish

Nigger should have a place in any serious dictionary. The word is simply too important to ignore.

In this case, however, the CMU authorities capitulated too quickly to the formulaic rage of affronted blacks, the ill-considered sentimentality of well-meaning whites, and their own crass, bureaucratic opportunism.

Among poor black youth who… carry a burning resentment of white society. To growl that one is a nigga is a seductive gesture… that can feel bitterly empowering.”

By putting nigger in white characters’ mouths, the author is not branding blacks, but rather branding the whites.

In 1988, in Indianapolis, state authorities established a residential treatment center for convicted child molesters in an all-white neighborhood. From the center's opening until mid-1991—a period during which all of the residents of the center were white—neighbors voiced no objections. In June 1991, however, authorities converted the center into a

For some questioners, my book is more authentic and acceptable insofar as I have been called a nigger and have otherwise been forced to encounter it in my own life. I make no such claim on my own behalf. I do not believe that my experiences entitle me to any more deference than that which is due on the strength of my writing alone. Experience is on