It s the nuclear bomb of racial epithets, a Word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries.
Should blacks be able to use.
The word, of course, is nigger , and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it.
Paradoxically, among many black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment.
It s the nuclear bomb of racial epithets, a Word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries