{"id":1138,"date":"2006-06-08T09:21:19","date_gmt":"2006-06-08T17:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/06\/what_up_my_n-word.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T11:10:51","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T16:10:51","slug":"what_up_my_nwor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/06\/what_up_my_nwor.html","title":{"rendered":"What Up, My N-Word?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This seems a bit of a stretch<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The prosecutor wasn’t having it:<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p>\n

“Would you say that’s a greeting?” Herring asked.<\/p>\n

Gaudelli objected, and Judge Richard Buchter would not allow the witness to answer the question.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, it takes a special kind of academic to serve as an expert witness about “the N-word”:<\/p>\n

Outside court, Kennedy said he was too uninformed to give an answer.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then there’s this nugget from the Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.'”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sliding_into_the_abyss_of_elitism_pretentiousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}