Free Nigger: The Strange Career Of A Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy

toward enlarging the common ground of American culture, a field that is open to all comers regardless of their origin. Despite Spike Lee's protests to the contrary, Quentin Tarantino is talented and has the goods to prove it. That is not to say that he shouldbe exempt from criticism, but Lee's racial critique of his fellow director is off the mark. It is almost wholly ad hominem. It focuses on the character of Tarantino's race rather than the character of his work—brilliant work that allows the word
nigger
to be heard in a rich panoply of contexts and intonations.
    In 1997 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a computer technician named Delphine Abraham decided to look up the definition of
nigger
in the tenth edition of
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
. 37 This is what she found:
    1: a black person—usu. taken to be offensive 2: a member of any dark-skinned race—usu. taken to be offensive 3: a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons ˜s… all the people who feel left out of the political process— Ron Dellums
    usage
Nigger
in senses 1 and 2 can be found in the works of such writers of the past as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, but it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English. Its use by and among blacks is not always intended or taken as offensive, but, except in sense 3 , it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.
     
    Abraham recorded what she subsequently felt and did:
    I felt that the first two definitions labeled me and anyone else who happened to be Black or have dark skin a nigger. Outraged, I called Merriam-Webster in Springfield, Massachusetts. I reached the company's president and publisher, John Morse, who was polite but really didn't seem to understand my concerns. Not getting a response that satisfied me, I told him before hanging up, “Something should be done about this, and I think I'm going to start a petition drive to have the word removed or redefined.”
    Just by speaking locally, I gathered more than 2,000 signatures within the first month. I was interviewed by the Associated Press news service, on radio talk shows, and even on CNN. Newsgroups on the Internet joined the campaign. Syndicated newspaper columnists weighed in. The NAACP, through its president and CEO, Kweisi Mfume, suggested organizing a boycott if Merriam-Webster did not review the definition.
    Most people believe, as I do, that the N-word needs a more accurate first definition reflecting that it is a derogatory term used to dehumanize or oppress a group or race of people. 38
     
    The question is, should Abrahams, Mfume, or anyone else have felt insulted by Merriam-Webster's definition?
    No.
    The definition notes that the term is usually taken to be offensive and then states, for good measure, that the N-word “now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatoryracial slur in English.” Abrahams claimed that the Merriam-Webster definition labeled as a nigger anyone who happened to be black. But that view is unreasonable given the totality of the definition offered by the dictionary. In defining
nigger
, moreover, Webster's 10 th does not vary from its typical practice. For instance, in defining
honky
, the dictionary posits:
“usu. disparaging:
a white person.”
    In response to Abraham's petition drive, representatives of Merriam-Webster tried to depoliticize the matter by portraying the dictionary as a mechanical, autonomous linguistic mirror. To this end, the marketing director repeatedly averred that “a dictionary is a scholarly reference, not a political tool. As long as the word is in use, it is our responsibility as dictionary publishers to put the word into the dictionary.” 39 Similarly, the company president, John R. Morse, portrayed his editors as mere technicians lacking independent powers of their own. Dictionary makers, Morse maintained, “do not invent the words that go into the dictionary, and they don't decide what meanings