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.”

Adherents to this view can take inspiration from Ralph Ellison. There is an American Negro tradition, he wrote, “which teaches one to deflect racial provocation and to master and contain pain. It is a tradition which abhors as obscene any trading on one's own anguish for gain or sympathy; which springs not from a desire to deny the harshness of exi

Perhaps in the context of antidiscrimination law at the workplace, moreover, it is better to err on the side of overenforcement rather than underenforcement. Still, even if that is so, it is important to remember that the N-word is not self-defining. Its actual meaning in any given instance always depends on surrounding circumstances. Deriving an u

The judges, however, wisely rejected that argument, quoting Thurgood Marshall's observation that given the mysteries of human motivation, “it would be unwise to presume as a matter of law that human beings of one definable group will not discriminate against other members of their group.”

the suspicion that whatever the setting, whites derive racist pleasure out of hearing, saying, or even alluding to “nigger.”

Of all the things that have hurt the campaign against nigger-as-insult, unjustifiable lying and silly defenses have inflicted the most damage.

For this reason, we may count ourselves fortunate that the anti–hate-speech campaign of the regulationists fizzled and has largely subsided. This particular effort to do away with nigger-as-insult and its kindred symbols was simply not worth the various costs that success would have exacted.

Many critics of the “HNIC” title proceeded as if their offended sensibilities alone should settle the matter—as if their sense of outrage necessarily made the act they objected to a bad act warranting an apology.

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