A black Harvard law professor repeatedly used the N-word on CNN during a debate about the use of the slur in academic situations.
Appearing Saturday on Smerconish, the CNN morning show hosted by Michael Smerconish, professor Randall Kennedy argued that using the N-word in certain situations, including academia, is appropriate. In the lead-up to the interview, Smerconish went through a litany of professors who had faced backlash for using the word.
“Is it acceptable to enunciate, for pedagogical reasons, a racial epithet that some find deeply upsetting?” he asked.
“Sure, you should be able to enunciate the term n—– for pedagogical reasons,” Kennedy said. “In the instances that you mentioned in your introduction, you had teachers who were seeking to drive home as vividly as possible the depth and the centrality and the influence of racism in American life. And one of the ways in which these teachers sought to do that was to quote from important figures in American history.”
Smerconish then said he was “jarred” by Kennedy’s use of the N-word, noting that they had not discussed whether he would use it beforehand.
The professor also argued that the use of the word should “not necessarily” be confined to the classroom.
Kennedy said: “If you are in a discussion and you are talking about the way in which until relatively recently there were politicians who routinely used the infamous ‘N-word’ to refer to black people. And if you were sort of talking about this and saying, you know, until relatively recently there are politicians that in the United States Congress who would use n—–. And if you were to say that over dinner, would it be right for somebody to condemn you for having made a statement, the purpose of which was to underline the problem of American racism?”
He also said that the race of the person who uses the N-word is not relevant as to whether they should use the word.
