The N-Word: Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned

Abstract

In the fall of 2008, I dared to teach a fifteen-week course that focused on a single word, a word arguably like no other, a word adorned with these emotionally colorful descriptors: “the most explosive of racial epithets,” “our cruelest word,” “the most toxic in the English language,” “the most troubling word in our language,” “almost magical in its negative power,” “six simple letters that convey centuries of pain, evil and contempt,” “an almost universally known word of contempt,” “occupies a place in the soul where logic and reason never go,” and “the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.” I have since taught the course three more times.