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To: H-OIEAHC@H-NET.MSU.EDU RE Dave Crosby's discussion of the use of "nigger" in the classroom. If it were a clear case of dramatization -- i.e. a lecture given totally in persona -- I might see it as unobjectionable. But only if, over the course of the term, such personifications involved conflicting POVs. If you're always channeling the master, I still think it's very problematic. I agree that print and lecture should probably have different norms but I think that cuts in the other direction. Maybe it's anal of me to point this out, but "in quotes" is a print rather than an oral phenomenon. I don't think that inflection or waving your fingers in the air really distances you from the utterance. Lecture involves social dynamics -- both relationships of authority between lecturer and auditor and relationships among auditors. I'd be more cautious of bandying about derogatory terms under those circumstances than I would in print where I have more space to explain myself and less worry about what I may unconsciously be authorizing/enabling others to say. Once you start using "nigger" to refer to black people, how do you draw the line when you don't hear the quotation marks/requisite pedagogical intent when a student utters it in seminar? Let me say that I don't think "nigger" is a term that should never be uttered in a classroom. If you're talking about the word itself, by all means use it and avoid the childish "n-word" locution. But I'd never use it to refer to people. Sue HembergerIndependent Scholar
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