What Up, My N-Word?

This seems a bit of a stretch:

A Harvard professor who wrote a book on the history of the “n-word” testified at “Fat Nick” Minucci’s Queens Supreme Court trial yesterday, and told jurors that nowadays, the term is both a “racial insult” and a “term of endearment.”

Randall Kennedy, who was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, was called by the defense to bolster the assertion that the 20-year-old high school dropout wasn’t being racist when he yelled “What up, n – – – – -,” before he allegedly beat a black man with a bat in Howard Beach.

The one-time Rhodes scholar was asked by Minucci’s lawyer Albert Gaudelli how the n-word is used today — particularly among those who listen to rap and hip-hop music.

“The word is used in a lot of different ways,” said Kennedy, who is black. “Sometimes it’s a racial slur. Sometimes it’s used as a term of endearment.”

The prosecutor wasn’t having it:

Prosecutor Mariela Herring, under cross-examination, told Kennedy to assume that a white person was complaining about a black person coming into a neighborhood to commit a crime. Also assume, she said, that this white person was told by another white friend that three blacks tried to rob him and they chased him down with a baseball bat and said “What are you f – – – ing n – – – – – doing in my neighborhood?”

“Would you say that’s a greeting?” Herring asked.

Gaudelli objected, and Judge Richard Buchter would not allow the witness to answer the question.

Still, it takes a special kind of academic to serve as an expert witness about “the N-word”:

Outside court, Kennedy said he was too uninformed to give an answer.

“At what point was this stated and what else was going on? Do these people know one another?” he said. “[There’s] a whole list of things I’d want to know to come up with an impression of what was going on.”

Then there’s this nugget from the Times:

Mr. Gaudelli said that when he phoned Professor Kennedy and asked him to testify, for no fee, the professor initially declined. But Mr. Gaudelli persisted.

“I said: ‘Do you believe what you wrote? Are you willing to stand by it?’ Do you want to deprive my client of a fair trial?’ ” Mr. Gaudelli recounted. “He said, ‘I’ll call you in the morning.'”

Asked how the testimony went, Mr. Gaudelli said: “I think I did good; I got a Rhodes scholar to testify for nothing and all I had to do is drive him to the airport.”