Nigger: The Strange Career Of A Troublesome Word (22 page)

10.
Russell,
The Color of Crime
,
162
; “Sentencing in False Report of Racism,”
Seattle Times
, December
11
,
1996
.

11.
Russell,
The Color of Crime
,
163
; Caitlin Francke, “Hate-Crime ‘Victim’ Pleads Guilty; Tenant Painted Slurs in her Townhouse,”
Baltimore Sun
, January
16
,
1997
; Ed Heard, “Support Pours in for Targets of Racial Graffiti; North Laurel Family Gets Donations, Encouragement,”
Baltimore Sun
, April
26
,
1996
.

12.
Peter Applebombe, “Woman's Claim of Racial Crime Is Called a Hoax,”
New York Times
, June
1
,
1990
; see also Russell,
The Color of Crime
,
160
.

13.
Applebombe, “Woman's Claim of Racial Crime Is Called a Hoax.”

14.
See Debra Dickerson, “The Last Plantation: The ‘Niggardly’ Scandal Should Teach Whites to Watch Their Language and Blacks to Toughen
Up
,”
Salon
, February
5
,
1999
.

15.
Julianne Malveaux, “Of N-Words and Race Men,”
Black Issues in Higher Education
, February
18
,
1999
. See also Roy Riley, “David Howard Is History Because of Indiscretion,”
Washington Times
, February
26
,
1999
: “Mr. Howard is history because he was not bright enough… not to utter the word ‘niggardly’ in a city that is predominately black.”

16.
See, e.g., Jonathan Yardley, “Cool Words Can Influence, So Drop Them,”
Newsday
, February
4
,
1999
; Steven Pinker, “Racist Language, Real and Imagined,”
New York Times
, February
2
,
1999
.

17.
Dickerson, “The Last Plantation.”

18.
Courtland Milloy, “Some Words Just Taste Unpleasant on the Tongue,”
Washington Post
, January
31
,
1999
.

19.
Sam Fullwood III, “D.C. Mayor Under Fire in War of Words over Word Use,”
Los Angeles Times
, January
29
,
1999
.

20.
Barry Saunders, “That D.C. Style: A Kinte Cloth Mantle of Oppression,”
News and Observer
(Raleigh, North Carolina), February
6
,
1999
.

21.
Tony Snow, “Linguistic Lynching over ‘Niggardly,’ ”
Des Moines Register
, February
3
,
1999
. See also editorial, “Obsessing over the N-Word,”
Hartford Courant
, February
3
,
1999
(“Talk about the excesses of political correctness: last week, an assistant to Washington's new Mayor lost his job for being literate. … A person shouldn't lose his job because others misunderstood proper word usage”); Lynda Hill, “A Word, a Hairtrigger Racial Sensitivity, a Job Lost,”
Christian Science Monitor
, February
3
,
1999
; Ken Hamblin, “PC Police Strike Again,”
Denver Post
, February
2
,
1999
; Cynthia Tucker, “The Blacker-Than-Thou Thing,”
Denver Post
, February
2
,
1999
.

22.
See Gwen Carleton, “ ‘Niggardly’ Upsets UW Student,”
Capitol Times
(Madison, Wisconsin), February
2
,
1999
.

23.
Natalie Anderson, letter to the editor,
Boston Magazine
, May
1998
.

24.
Sandra B. Fleishman, letter to the editor,
Boston Magazine
, May
1998
.

25.
Craig Unger, “A Letter from the Editor,”
Boston Magazine
, May
1998
.

26.
See Lawrence Otis Graham, “Head Nigger in Charge: Roles That Black Professionals Play in the Corporate World,”
Business and Society Review
, June
22
,
1995
.

27.
See, e.g., Stan Simpson,“In Defining the N-word, Let Meaning Be Very Clear,”
Hartford Courant
, November
3
,
1997
: “What would happen if a white friend were to come up to me and say [as does my black brother], ‘Hey, Nigger! How are you doing?’ Well, excuse my ebonics, but we be fightin’.”

28.
Listen to Chris Rock, “Niggers vs. Black People,” on
Roll with the New
(1997). For the video performance, see Chris Rock,
Bring the Pain
(1996)
.

29.
Quoted in Kathleen Pfeiffer, introduction to Carl
VanVechten,
Nigger Heaven
(University of Illinois Press ed.,
2000
; orig. pub.
1926
), xiv.

30.
Quoted ibid.

31.
Quoted ibid., xiv, xxx, xxxi.

32.
Quoted ibid., xxx.

33.
Quoted ibid., xxvii.

34.
See Kevin Merida, “Spike Lee, Holding Court: The Director Talks Movies, Hollywood, Basketball and, Oh Yes, Controversy,”
Washington Post
, May
1
,
1998
.

35.
See Lynne K. Varner and Hugo Kugiya, “What's in a Name?—A Hated Racial Slur Finds New Currency—and Controversy—in Popular Culture,”
Seattle Times
, July
6
,
1998
.

36.
See Richard Corliss, “The Scheme of a Notion,”
Time
, October
9
,
2000
; “Spike's Minstrel Show,”
Newsweek
, October
2
,
2000
.

37.
Delphine Abraham, “Changing Webster's Dictionary,”
Essence
, March
1998
.

38.
Ibid.

39.
“NAACP Leader Kweisi Mfume Says Merriam-Webster's Decision on Use of Racial Slurs Is ‘Unacceptable,’
”Jet
, May
25
,
1998
.

40.
See John M. Morse, “Sparing Sensitivities Isn't Dictionary's Job,”
USA Today
, May
11
,
1998
.

41.
Quoted in Jar vis DeBerry, “Keeping a Hateful Word inside a Dictionary,”
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, June
23
,
1998
.

42.
John H. Wallace, “The Case against
Huck Finn,”
in James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney, and Thaddious M. Davis, eds.,
Satire or Evasion: Black Perspectives on “Huckleberry Finn”
(1992),
16
.

43.
Mark Twain,
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, ed. Thomas Coo-ley, Norton critical ed.,
3
d ed. (
1999
).

44.
Wallace, “The Case against
Huck Finn,”
21
.

45.
See Shelley Fisher Fishkin,
Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture
(1996),
73
-
74
.

46.
Quoted ibid.,
82
.

47.
See, e.g., Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second
Thoughts on Mark Twain's ‘Masterpiece,’ ” in
Adventures of Huckle-berry Finn
, Norton critical ed.

48.
See
United States v.J.H.H.
,
22
F.
3
d
821
(
8
th Cir.
1994
).

49.
See
Dambrot v. Central Mich. Univ., 55
F.
3
d
1177
(
6
th Cir.
1995
). See also Michael P. Pompeo, “Constitutional Law—First Amendment—Athletic Coach's Locker Room Speech Is Not Protected under First Amendment, Even Though University Policy Is Found Unconstitutional—
Dambrot v. Central Michigan University,
55
F.
3
d
1177
(
6
th Cir.
1995
),”
Seton Hall Journal of Sport Law
6
(
1996
):
277
. My understanding of
Dambrot
has also been enriched by conversations with Professor Robert A. Sedler, who represented Coach Dambrot on appeal.

50.
See First Brief of Plaintiffs-Appellants–Cross-Appellees in
Dambrot v. Central Mich. Univ.
at
6
(quoting Complaint of Keith Dambrot).

51.
Ibid. Coach Dambrot had also said on one occasion prior to the locker-room incident that his players should not be “niggers in the classroom.” Questioned later about that comment, the coach explained that he had been trying to express his feeling that “you can't be aggressive, tough, hard-nosed in class, especially at a school like Central Michigan University where the faculty members don't understand a lot about black people or have many black people in class”
(55
F.
3
rd at
1181
).

52.
First Brief of Plaintiffs-Appellants–Cross-Appelless,
Dambrot v. Central Mich. Univ.
at
10
n.
4
.

53.
Ibid. at
11
–
12
n.
7
.

54.
Ibid. at
12
–
13
n.
9
.

55.
Ibid. at
13
n.
11
.

56.
Other coaches have used
nigger
in the same way Dambrot did. For example, testifying on Dambrot's behalf, Adele Young, an African American basketball coach, explained that “a coach is around the players seven days a week, nine months of the year. The players are a part of the coach's family. A coach can pick up the players’ language and speech patterns without being aware of a change.… My players, both African-American and White, use
[nigger]
freely as I do in the coach setting. When used in this way, ‘nigger’ means a tough, hard player. Coach Dambrot understood the way players use ‘nigger’ and when he used it, he used it the very same way they did” (Ibid. at
9
).

57.
Chris Colin, “The N-Word,” Salon.com, November
8
,
1999
; Alison Schneider, “To Many Adjunct Professors, Academic Freedom Is a Myth,” December
10
,
1999
. See also
Hardy v.Jefferson Community College
,
2001
FED App.
0267
P (
6
th Cir.
2001
).

58.
See “Black Students Forgive Teacher's Mistaken Slur,”
NewYork Times
, October
17
,
1988
.

59.
See Richard Delgado, “Words That Wound: A Tort Action for Racial Insults, Epithets and Name-Calling,”
Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review
17
(
1982
):
133
; idem, “Campus Antiracism Rules: Constitutional Narratives in Collision,”
Northwestern University Law Review 85
(
1991
):
343
; Charles Lawrence III, “If He Hollers Let Him Go: Regulating Racist Speech on Campus,”
Duke Law Journal
,
1990
,
431
; Mari J. Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story,”
Michigan Law Review
187
(
1989
):
2320
.

60.
See, e.g.,
UWM Post, Inc., v. Bd. of Regents
,
774
F.Supp.
1163
(E.D. Wis.
1991
);
Doe v. Univ. of Michigan
,
721
F.Supp.
852
(E.D. Mich.
1989
).

61.
For examples of this rhetoric, see Lawrence, “If He Hollers Let Him Go,”
434
,
449
; Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech,”
2370
(“Marked rise of racial harassment, hate speech, and racially motivated violence marks our entry into the
1990
s”). Even fervent opponents of speech codes accede without sufficient questioning to their antagonists’ portrayal of rising waves of campus racism; see, e.g., Nadine Strossen, “Regulating Racist Speech on Campus: A Modest Proposal?,”
Duke Law Journal
,
1990
,
484
,
488
. For useful commentary on this point, see James B. Jacobs and Kim-berly Potter,
Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics
(
1998
),
45
–
64
; Richard Bernstein,
The Dictatorship of Virtue
(
1994
),
183–215
.