RANDALL KENNEDY

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

Thursday, March 27 at 7:30pm · Mountainlair Ballroom

With the January 2002 publication of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law professor, found himself on the pages of The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and countless other publications.

His book, which traces the history of America’s most famous derogatory word, is a must-read for all students of American life. When followed through popular culture, the court system, academia, and disparate racial communities, the “nigger” (and its relative acceptability) is in constant flux. It has been used to remove judges and inflame juries, as a term of endearment and one of derision, and to ban as well as celebrate certain books.

In his lecture, Professor Kennedy discusses the profound history of this word in an attempt to further understand the racial dynamics that define America. Using the major points of his research, both legal and sociological, Kennedy relates his lessons with sparkling clarity. This is one lecture that everyone who has ever heard the famous “N-word” should attend.

Says Kennedy, “Given the power of ‘nigger’ to wound, it is important to provide a context within which presentation of that term can be properly understood. It is also imperative, however, to permit present and future readers to see for themselves directly the full gamut of American cultural productions, the ugly as well as the beautiful, those that mirror the majestic features of American democracy and those that mirror America’s most depressing failings.”

Kennedy’s latest book -- Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption -- addresses the fears of transgressive interracial relationships, informed over the centuries by ugly racial biases and fantasies, that still linger in American society today. This brilliant study, ranging from plantation days to the present, explores the historical, sociological, legal, and moral issues that continue to feed and complicate that fear. Salon and The New York Times have hailed the book’s intellectual diligence and message of hope.

Kennedy is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He served as clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime and the Law. Professor Kennedy writes for a wide range of scholarly and general interest publications and sits on the editorial boards of The Nation, Dissent, and The American Prospect.