Randall Kennedy

My parents were refugees from the Jim Crow South.

I was born in the Deep South, South Carolina.

In my household, I heard the word nigger used in every possible way.

I heard it used as a slur.

I also heard it used with respect to people who were praised.

You know, my father, I clearly remember my father, whom I revere.

That's the smartest nigga in the world.

That's the bravest nigga in the world.

That's the baddest nigger I know.

He wasn't putting people down.

This is the way he talked.

And I grew up hearing this word in various ways.

And so I was thinking to myself, God, where did this word come from?

And one of the first things I did, I clearly remember just jumping up out of my seat, running up to the library, Oxford English Dictionary, when did this word first appear in English?

What was the history of the word?

And then what really sort of grabbed my attention is I went, I get my computer going and I asked the computer system,

give me every case, every federal court case in which this word appears, thousands of cases.

And then I said, oh my goodness, this is really interesting.

And then I started just cataloging all the different cases.

There came a point, I'd say probably about a month into this, I compared the usage, I compared the number of times