Randall Kennedy's Book

In the introduction of Kennedy's book he discusses his own personal experiences with the word "nigger". After his first time being called by the name he went to his parents. Both of his parents had different ways of dealing with the issue. His father believed that he had the right to "go to war" if he wanted to. While his mother said, "sticks and stones may break your bones, words need never harm you". Kennedy knew "that word" could be used many ways and have many different meanings but he made clear in the introduction that "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" (xviii).

In the first chapter Kennedy explains the different ways the n-word is used. Some believe that when white people use the word they can be expressing it to show white supremacy. While some believe that African Americans have the right to use the word talking about or to one another because they "know" how it feels and have a better understanding. Non-blacks who side with African Americans on racial controversies are called "nigger lovers". This includes "Whites who refrain from discriminating against blacks, whites who become intimate with blacks, whites who confront anti black practices, whites who work on the electoral campaigns of black candidates, whites who nominate blacks for membership in clubs, whites who protect blacks in the course of their official duties, and whites who merely socials with blacks" (22).

While reading the story on page twenty-seven caught my attention. The prosecution of Robert Montgomery. State authorities established a center for convicted child molesters in a white Indianapolis neighborhood in 1988. In June of 1991 they had changed the establishment into a center for homeless veterans, twenty-five were African American. Montgomery had damaged a car and started a cross on fire in opposition. "An all-white cadre of child molesters was evidently acceptable, but the presence of blacks made a racially integrated group of homeless veterans intolerable!" (27). This caught my attention because I don't understand how people can think this way. Montgomery was clearly upset about African Americans living in an establishment in a white neighborhood. It doesn't make sense; child molesters should cause more of an upset, living in a neighborhood, than African Americans.

Kennedy sums up the point of the chapter when he states that the n-word "it could be opened like an umbrella to cover a dozen different moods, or stretched like a rubber band to wrap up our family with other colored families....Nigger was a piece-of-clay word that you could shape...to express your feelings" (30). The word molds, like clay, according to whoever is using it and the context in which they use it.