Teaching the N-Word

A black professor, an all-white class, and the thing nobody will say

By Emily Bernard

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

—Countee Cullen, “Incident” (1925)

October 2004

ERIC IS CRAZY ABOUT queer theory. Ithink it is safe to say that Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and LeeEdelman have changed his life. Every week, he comes to my office toreport on the connections he is making between the works of thesewriters and the books he is reading for the class he is taking with me,African-American autobiography.

I like Eric. So tonight, even though it is well after six and I ameager to go home, I keep our conversation going. I ask him what hethinks about the word “queer,” whether or not he believes, independentof the theorists he admires, that epithets can ever really be reclaimedand reinvented.

“‘Queer’ has important connotations for me,” he says. “It’s daring,political. I embrace it.” He folds his arms across his chest, and thenunfolds them.

I am suspicious.

“What about ‘nigger’?” I ask. “If we’re talking about the importanceof transforming hateful language, what about that word?” From mybookshelf I pull down Randall Kennedy’s book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word,and turn it so its cover faces Eric. “Nigger,” in stark white typeagainst a black background, is staring at him, staring at anyone whohappens to be walking past the open door behind him.

Over the next 30 minutes or so, Eric and I talk about “nigger.” He isuncomfortable; every time he says “nigger,” he drops his voice and doesnot meet my eyes. I know that he does not want to say the word; he isfollowing my lead. He does not want to say it because he is white; hedoes not want to say it because I am black. I feel my power as hisprofessor, the mentor he has so ardently adopted. I feel the power ofRandall Kennedy’s book in my hands, its title crude and unambiguous. Say it, we both instruct this white student. And he does.

It is late. No one moves through the hallway. I think about mycolleagues, some of whom still sit at their own desks. At any minute,they might pass my office on their way out of the building. What wouldthey make of this scene? Most of my colleagues are white. What would Ithink if I walked by an office and saw one of them holding up Nigger to a white student’s face? A black student’s face?

“I think I am going to add ‘Who Can Say Nigger?’ to our reading fornext week,” I say to Eric. “It’s an article by Kennedy that covers someof the ideas in this book.” I tap Nigger with my finger, and then put itdown on my desk.

“I really wish there was a black student in our class,” Eric says as he gathers his books to leave.

AS USUAL I HAVE assigned way too muchreading. Even though we begin class discussion with references to threeessays required for today, our conversation drifts quickly to “Who CanSay Nigger?” and plants itself there. We talk about the word, who cansay it, who won’t say it, who wants to say it, and why. There are 11students in the class. All of them are white.

Our discussion is lively and intense; everyone seems impatient tospeak. We talk about language, history, and identity. Most students say“the n-word” instead of “nigger.” Only one or two students actually usethe word in their comments. When they do, they use the phrase “the word‘nigger,’” as if to cushion it. Sometimes they make quotations markswith their fingers. I notice Lauren looking around. Finally, she raisesher hand.

“I have a question; it’s somewhat personal. I don’t want to put you on the spot.”

“Go ahead, Lauren,” I say with relief.

“Okay, so how does it feel for you to hear us say that word?”

I have an answer ready.

“I don’t enjoy hearing it. But I don’t think that I feel moreoffended by it than you do. What I mean is, I don’t think I have aspecial place of pain inside of me that the word touches because I amblack.” We are both human beings, I am trying to say. She nods her head,seemingly satisfied. Even inspired, I hope.

I am lying, of course.

I am grateful to Lauren for acknowledging my humanity in ourdiscussion. But I do not want me—my feelings, my experiences, myhumanity—to become the center of classroom discussion. Here at theUniversity of Vermont, I routinely teach classrooms full of whitestudents. I want to educate them, transform them. I want to teach themthings about race they will never forget. To achieve this, I believe Imust give of myself. I want to give to them—but I want to keep much ofmyself to myself. How much? I have a new answer to this question everyweek.

I ALWAYS GIVE MY STUDENTS a lecture at the beginning of everyAfrican- American studies course I teach. I tell them, in essence, notto confuse my body with the body of the text. I tell them that while itwould be disingenuous for me to suggest that my own racial identity hasnothing to do with my love for African-American literature, my race isonly one of the many reasons why I stand before them. “I stand here,” Isay, “because I have a Ph.D., just like all your other professors.” Imake sure always to tell them that my Ph.D., like my B.A., comes fromYale.

“In order to get this Ph.D.,” I continue, “I studied with some ofthis country’s foremost authorities on African-American literature, and asignificant number of these people are white.

“I say this to suggest that if you fail to fully appreciate thismaterial, it is a matter of your intellectual laziness, not your race.If you cannot grasp the significance of Frederick Douglass’s plight, forinstance, you are not trying hard enough, and I will not accept that.”

I have another part of this lecture. It goes: “Conversely, thismaterial is not the exclusive property of students of color. This isliterature. While these books will speak to us emotionally according toour different experiences, none of us is especially equipped toappreciate the intellectual and aesthetic complexities that characterizeAfrican-American literature. This is American literature, Americanexperience, after all.”

Sometimes I give this part of my lecture, but not always. Sometimes I give it and then regret it later.

AS SOON AS LAUREN asks me how I feel, it is as if the walls of theroom soften and collapse slightly, nudging us a little bit closertogether. Suddenly, 11 pairs of eyes are beaming sweet messages at me. Iwant to laugh. I do. “Look at you all, leaning in,” I say. “How closewe have all become.”

I sit at the end of a long narrow table. Lauren usually sits at theother end. The rest of the students flank us on either side. When I makemy joke, a few students, all straight men, I notice, abruptly pullthemselves back. They shift their eyes away from me, look instead attheir notebooks, the table. I have made them ashamed to show that theycare about me, I realize. They are following the cues I have been givingthem since the beginning of the semester, cues that they should takethis class seriously, that I will be offended if they do not.“African-American studies has had to struggle to exist at all,” I havesaid. “You owe it your respect.” Don’t be too familiar, is what I am really saying. Don’t be too familiar with me.

Immediately, I regret having made a joke of their sincere attempt tooffer me their care. They want to know me; they see this moment as anopportunity. But I can’t stop. I make more jokes, mostly about them, andwhat they are saying and not saying. I can’t seem to help myself.

ERIC, WHO IS SITTING near me, does not recoil at my jokes; he doesnot respond to my not-so-subtle efforts to push him and everyone elseback. He continues to lean in, his torso flat against the edge of thetable. He looks at me. He raises his hand.

“Emily,” he says, “would you tell them what you told me the other dayin your office? You were talking about how you dress and what it meansto you.” “Yes,” I begin slowly. “I was telling Eric about how importantit is to me that I come to class dressed up.”

“And remember what you said about Todd? You said that Todd exercises his white privilege by dressing so casually for class.”

Todd is one of my closest friends in the English department. Hisoffice is next door to mine. I don’t remember talking about Todd’sclothing habits with Eric, but I must have. I struggle to come up with acomfortably vague response to stop Eric’s prodding. My face grows hot.Everyone is waiting.

“Well, I don’t know if I put it exactly like that, but I do believethat Todd’s style of dress reflects his ability to move in the worldhere—everywhere, really—less self-consciously than I do.” As I sit here,I grow increasingly more alarmed at what I am revealing: my personalphilosophies; my attitudes about my friend’s style of dress; myinsecurities; my feelings. I quietly will Eric to stop, even as I amimpressed by his determination. I meet his eyes again.

“And you. You were saying that the way you dress, it means something, too,” Eric says. On with this tug of war, I think.

I relent, let go of the rope. “Listen, I will say this. I am awarethat you guys, all of my students at UVM, have very few blackprofessors. I am aware, in fact, that I may be the first black teachermany of you have ever had. And the way I dress for class reflects myawareness of that possibility.” I look sharply at Eric. That’s it. No more.

September 2004

ON THE FIRST DAY of class, Nate asks me what I want to be called.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, fussing with equipment in the room. Iknow. But I feel embarrassed, as if I have been found out. “What do youthink?” I ask them.

They shuffle around, equally embarrassed. We all know that I have todecide, and that whatever I decide will shape our classroom dynamic invery important ways.

“What does Gennari ask you to call him?” I have inherited several ofthese students from my husband, John Gennari, another professor ofAfrican- American studies. He is white.

“Oh, we call him John,” Nate says with confidence. I am immediatelyenvious of the easy warmth he seems to feel for John. I suspect it hasto do with the name thing.

“Well, just call me Emily, then. This is an honors class, after all.And I do know several of you already. And then wouldn’t it be strange tocall the husband John and the wife Professor?” Okay, I have convincedmyself.

Nate says, “Well, John and I play basketball in a pickup game onWednesdays. So, you know, it would be weird for me to be checking himand calling him ‘Professor Gennari.’”

We all laugh, and move on to other topics. But my mind locks onto animage of my husband and Nate on the basketball court, two white men,covered in sweat, body to body, heads down, focused on the ball.

October 2004

“IT’S NOT THAT I can’t say it, it’s that I don’t want to. I will notsay it,” Sarah says. She wears her copper red hair in a short, smartstyle that makes her look older than her years. When she smiles Iremember how young she is. She is not smiling now. She looks indignant.She is indignant because I am insinuating that there is a problem withthe fact that no one in the class will say “nigger.” Her indignationpleases me.

Good.

“I’d just like to remind you all that just because a person refusesto say ‘nigger,’ that doesn’t mean that person is not a racist,” I say.They seem to consider this.

“And another thing,” Sarah continues. “About dressing for class? Idislike it when my professors come to class in shorts, for instance.This is a profession. They should dress professionally.”

Later, I tell my husband, John, about our class discussion. When Iget to Sarah’s comment about professors in shorts, he says, “Good forher.”

I HOLD UP Nigger and show its cover to the class. I hand it to the person on my left, gesture for him to pass the book around the room.

“Isn’t it strange that when we refer to this book, we keep calling it ‘the n-word’?”

Lauren comments on the affect of one student who actually said it.“Colin looked like he was being strangled.” Of the effect on the otherstudents, she says, “I saw us all collectively cringing.”

“Would you be able to say it if I weren’t here?” I blurt.

A few students shake their heads. Tyler’s hand shoots up. He always sits directly to my right.

“That’s just bullshit,” he says to the class, and I force myself not to raise an eyebrow at bullshit. “If Emily weren’t here, you all would be able to say that word.”

I note that he, himself, has not said it, but do not make this observation out loud.

“No.” Sarah is firm. “I just don’t want to be the kind of person who says that word, period.”

“Even in this context?” I ask.

“Regardless of context,” Sarah says.

“Even when it’s the title of a book?”

I tell the students that I often work with a book called Nigger Heaven, written in 1926 by a white man, Carl Van Vechten.

“Look, I don’t want to give you the impression that I am somehowlonging for you guys to say ‘nigger,’” I tell them, “but I do think thatsomething is lost when you don’t articulate it, especially if thecontext almost demands its articulation.”

“What do you mean? What exactly is lost?” Sarah insists.

“I don’t know,” I say. I do know. But right here, in this moment, thelast thing I want is to win an argument that winds up with Sarah saying“nigger” out loud.

THROUGHOUT OUR DISCUSSION, Nate is the only student who will say“nigger” out loud. He sports a shearling coat and a Caesar haircut. Hequotes Jay-Z. He makes a case for “nigga.” He is that kind of white kid;he is down. “He is so down, he’s almost up,” Todd will say in December,when I show him the title page of Nate’s final paper for this class.The page contains one word, “Nigger,” in black type against a whitebackground. It is an autobiographical essay. It is a very good paper.

October 1994

NATE REMINDS ME OF a student in the very first class I taught all onmy own, a senior seminar called “Race and Representation.” I was stillin graduate school. It was 1994 and Pulp Fiction had just comeout. I spent an entire threehour class session arguing with my studentsover the way race was represented in the movie. One student, inparticular, passionately resisted my attempts to analyze the wayTarantino used “nigger” in the movie.

“What is his investment in this word? What is he, as the whitedirector, getting out of saying ‘nigger’ over and over again?” I asked.

After some protracted verbal arm wrestling, the student gave in.

“Okay, okay! I want to be the white guy who can say ‘nigger’ to blackguys and get away with it. I want to be the cool white guy who can say‘nigger.’”

“Thank you! Thank you for admitting it!” I said, and everyone laughed.

He was tall. He wore tie-dye T-shirts and had messy, curly brown hair. I don’t remember his name.

AFTER PULP FICTION CAME OUT, I wrote my older brother anearnest, academic e-mail. I wanted to “initiate a dialogue” with himabout the “cultural and political implications of the various usages of‘nigger’ in popular culture.”

His one-sentence reply went something like this: “Nigga, niggoo, niggu, negreaux, negrette, niggrum.”

“DO YOU GUYS EVER read The Source magazine?” In 1994, my students knew about The Source; some of them had read James Bernard’s column, “Doin’ the Knowledge.”

“He’s my brother,” I said, not bothering to mask my pride withanything like cool indifference. “He’s coming to visit class in a coupleof weeks, when we discuss hip-hop culture.”

The eyes of the tie-dyed student glistened.

“Quentin Tarantino is a cool-ass white boy!” James said on the day he came to visit my class. “He is one cool white boy.”

My students clapped and laughed.

“That’s what I said,” my tie-dyed student sighed.

James looked at me slyly. I narrowed my eyes at him. Thanks a lot.

September 2004

ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL in the morning, I park my car in the Allen Houselot. Todd was the one who told me about the lot. He said, “Everyonethinks the lot at the library is closer, but the lot behind Allen Houseis so much better. Plus, there are always spaces, in part becauseeveryone rushes for the library.”

It is true that the library lot is nearly always full in the morning.It’s also true that the Allen House lot is relatively empty, and muchcloser to my office. But if it were even just slightly possible for meto find a space in the library lot, I would probably try to park there,for one reason. To get to my office from Allen House, I have to cross abusy street. To get to my office from the library, I do not.

Several months ago, I was crossing the same busy street to get to myoffice after a class. It was late April, near the end of the semester,and it seemed as if everyone was outside. Parents were visiting, andstudents were yelling to each other, introducing family members fromacross the street. People smiled at me—wide, grinning smiles. I smiledback. We were all giddy with the promise of spring, which always comesso late in Vermont, if it comes at all.

Traffic was heavy, I noticed as I walked along the sidewalk,calculating the moment when I would attempt to cross. A car was stoppednear me; I heard rough voices. Out of the corner of my eye, I lookedinto the car: all white. I looked away, but I could feel them surveyingthe small crowd that was carrying me along. As traffic picked up again,one of the male voices yelled out, “Queers! Fags!” There was laughter.Then the car roared off.

I was stunned. I stopped walking and let the words wash over me.Queer. Fag. Annihilating, surely. I remembered my role as a teacher, amentor, in loco parentis, even though there were real parentseverywhere. I looked around to check for the wounds caused by thosehateful words. I peered down the street: too late for a license plate.All around me, students and parents marched to their destinations, as ifthey hadn’t heard. Didn’t you hear that? I wanted to shout.

All the while I was thinking, Not nigger. Not yet.

October 2004

NATE jumps in.

“Don’t you grant a word power by not saying it? Aren’t we, in some way, amplifying its ugliness by avoiding it?” He asks.

“I am afraid of how I will be affected by saying it,” Lauren says. “I just don’t want that word in my mouth.”

Tyler remembers a phrase attributed to Farai Chideya in RandallKennedy’s essay. He finds it and reads it to us. “She says that then-word is the ‘trump card, the nuclear bomb of racial epithets.’”

“Do you agree with that?” I ask.

Eleven heads nod vigorously.

“Nuclear bombs annihilate. What do you imagine will be destroyed if you guys use the word in here?”

Shyly, they look at me, all of them, and I understand. Me. It is my annihilation they imagine.

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS, my anthology of essays aboutinterracial friendship, came out in August, and the publicity departmenthas arranged for various interviews and other promotional events. When Idid an on-air interview with a New York radio show, one of the hosts,Janice, a black woman, told me that the reason she could not marry awhite man was because she believed if things ever got heated betweenthem, the white man would call her a nigger. I nodded my head. I hadheard this argument before. But strangely I had all but forgotten it.The fact that I had forgotten to fear “nigger” coming from the mouth ofmy white husband was more interesting to me than her fear, alive andever-present.

“ARE YOU BI-RACIAL?”

“No.”

“Are you married to a white man?”

“Yes.”

These were among the first words exchanged between Janice, the radiohost, and me. I could tell—by the way she looked at me, and didn’t lookat me; by the way she kept her body turned away from me; by hertone—that she had made up her mind about me before I entered the room. Icould tell that she didn’t like what she had decided about me, and thatshe had decided I was the wrong kind of black person. Maybe it was whatI had written in Some of My Best Friends. Maybe it was thefact that I had decided to edit a collection about interracialfriendships at all. When we met, she said, “I don’t trust white people,”as decisively and exactly as if she were handing me her business card. Iknew she was telling me that I was foolish to trust them, to marry one.I was relieved to look inside myself and see that I was okay, I wasstill standing. A few years ago, her silent judgment—this silentjudgment from any black person—would have crushed me.

When she said she could “tell” I was married to a white man, I askedher how. She said, “Because you are so friendly,” and did a little dancewith her shoulders. I laughed.

But Janice couldn’t help it; she liked me in spite of herself. As theinterview progressed, she let the corners of her mouth turn up in asmile. She admitted that she had a few white friends, even if theysometimes drove her crazy. At a commercial break, she said, “Maybe Iought to try a white man.” She was teasing me, of course. She hadn’tchanged her mind about white people, or dating a white man, but she hadchanged her mind about me. It mattered to me. I took what she wasoffering. But when the interview was over, I left it behind.

MY HUSBAND THOUGHT MY STORY about the interview was hilarious. When Igot home, he listened to the tape they gave me at the station. He saidhe wanted to use the interview in one of his classes.

A few days later, I told him what Janice said about dating a whiteman, that she won’t because she is afraid he will call her a nigger. As Itold him, I felt an unfamiliar shyness creep up on me.

“That’s just so far out of . . . it’s not in my head at all.” He washaving difficulty coming up with the words he wanted, I could tell. Butthat was okay. I knew what he meant. I looked at him sitting in hischair, the chair his mother gave us. I can usually find him in thatchair when I come home. He is John, I told myself. And he is white. Nomore or less John and no more or less white than he was before theinterview, and Janice’s reminder of the fear that I had forgotten tofeel.

I TELL MY STUDENTS in the African-American autobiography class aboutJanice. I say, “You would not believe the indignities I have suffered inmy humble attempts to ‘move this product,’ as they say in publishing.” Isay, “I have been surrounded by morons, and now I gratefully return tothe land of the intellectually agile.” They laugh.

I flatter them, in part because I feel guilty that I have missed somany classes in order to do publicity for my book. But I cringe,thinking of how I have called Janice, another black woman, a “moron” infront of these white students. I do not tell my students she is black.

“HERE IS A STORY FOR your students,” John tells me. We are in thecar, on our way to Cambridge for the weekend. “The only time I everheard ‘nigger’ in my home growing up was when my father’s cousin wasover for a visit. It was 1988, I remember. Jesse Jackson was running forpresident. My father’s cousin was sitting in the kitchen, talking to myparents about the election. ‘I’m going to vote for the nigger,’ myfather’s cousin said. ‘He’s the only one who cares about theworkingman.’”

John laughs. He often laughs when he hears something extraordinary, whether it’s good or bad.

“That’s fascinating,” I say.

The next time class meets, I tell my students this story.

“So what do we care about in this sentence?” I say. “The fact thatJohn’s father’s cousin used a racial epithet, or the fact that hisvoting for Jackson conveys a kind of ultimate respect for him? Isn’t hisvoting for Jackson more important for black progress than how hisfather’s cousin feels?”

I don’t remember what the students said. What I remember is that Itried to project for them a sense that I was untroubled by saying“nigger,” by my husband’s saying “nigger,” by his father’s cousin’shaving said “nigger,” by his parents’—my in-laws—tolerance of “nigger”in their home, years ago, long before I came along. What I remember isthat I leaned on the word “feels” with a near-sneer in my voice. It’s an intellectual issue, I beamed at them, and then I directed it back at myself. It has nothing to do with how it makes me feel.

AFTER MY INTERVIEW WITH Janice, I look at the white people around medifferently, as if from a distance. I do this, from time to time, almostas an exercise. I even do it to my friends, particularly my friends.Which of them has “nigger” in the back of her throat?

I go out for drinks with David, my senior colleague. It is a ritual.We go on Thursdays after class, always to the same place. I know that hewill order, in succession, two draft beers, and that he will ask thewaitress to help him choose the second. “What do you have on draft thatis interesting tonight?” he will say. I order red wine, and I, too,always ask the waitress’s advice. Then, we order a selection of cheeses,again soliciting assistance. We have our favorite waitresses. We likethe ones who indulge us.

Tonight, David orders a cosmopolitan.

We never say it, but I suspect we both like the waitresses whoappreciate the odd figure we cut. He is white, 60-something, male. I amblack, 30-something, female. Not such an odd pairing elsewhere, perhaps,but uncommon in Burlington, insofar as black people are uncommon inBurlington.

Something you can’t see is that we are both from the South. DifferentSouths, perhaps, 30 years apart, black and white. I am often surprisedby how much I like his company. All the way up here, I sometimes think when I am with him, and I am sitting with the South, the white South that, all of my childhood, I longed to escape.I once had a white boyfriend from New Orleans. “A white Southerner,Emily?” My mother asked, and sighed with worry. I understood. We brokeup.

David and I catch up. We talk about the writing we have been doing.We talk each other out of bad feelings we are harboring against this andthat person. (Like most Southerners, like the South in general, Davidand I have long memories.) We talk about classes. I describe to him theconversation I have been having with my students about “nigger.” Helaughs at my anecdotes.

I am on my second glass of wine. I try to remember to keep my voice down. It’s a very nice restaurant. People in Burlington do not want to hear “nigger” while they are eating a nice dinner, I say, chastising myself. I am tipsy.

As we leave, I accidentally knock my leg against a chair. You are drunk, I tell myself. You are drunk and black in a restaurant in Burlington. What were you thinking?I feel eyes on me as I walk out of the restaurant, eyes that may havebeen focused elsewhere, as far as I know, because I do not allow myselfto look.

LATER THAT EVENING, I am alone. I remember that David recently gaveme a poem of his to read, a poem about his racist grandmother, now dead,whom he remembers using the word “nigger” often and with relish. I liein bed and reconstruct the scene of David and me in the restaurant, ourconversation about “nigger.” Was his grandmother at the table with usall along?

The next day, I see David in his office, which is next to mine, onthe other side from Todd. I knock on the door. He invites me in. I sitin a chair, the chair I always sit in when I come to talk to him. Hetells me how much he enjoyed our conversation the night before.

“Me, too,” I say. “But today it’s as if I’m looking at you acrossfrom something,” I say. “It has to do with race.” I blame a book I amreading, a book for my African-American autobiography class, ToiDerricote’s The Black Notebooks. “Have you read it?” David is a poet, like Derricote.

“No, but I know Toi and enjoy her poetry. Everything I know about herand her work would lead me to believe that I would enjoy that book.” Heis leaning back in his chair, his arms folded behind his head.

“Well, it’s making me think about things, remember the ways that you and I will always be different,” I say abruptly.

David laughs. “I hope not.” He looks puzzled.

“It’s probably just temporary.” I don’t ask him my question about hisgrandmother, whether or not she is always somewhere with him, in him,in the back of his throat.

JOHN IS AT AN African-American studies conference in New York.Usually, I am thrilled to have the house to myself for a few days. Butthis time, I mope. I sit at the dining-room table, write this essay,watch out of the window.

Today, when John calls, he describes the activity at the conference.He tells me delicious and predictable gossip about people we know, andthe divas that we know of. The personalities, the in-fighting—greedily,we sift over details on the phone.

“Did you enjoy your evening with David last night?” he asks.

“I did, very much,” I say. “But give me more of the who-said-what.” Iknow he’s in a hurry. In fact, he’s talking on a cell phone (my cellphone; he refuses to get one of his own) as he walks down a New Yorkstreet.

“Oh, you know these Negroes.” His voice jounces as he walks.

“Yeah,” I say, laughing. I wonder who else can hear him.

TODD IS MARRIED TO Hilary, another of my close friends in thedepartment. She is white. Like John, Todd is out of town this weekend.Since their two boys were born, our godsons, John and I see them lessfrequently than we used to. But Hilary and I are determined to spendsome time together on this weekend with our husbands away.

Burlington traffic keeps me away from her and the boys for an hour,even though she lives only blocks away from me. When I get there, theboys are ready for their baths, one more feeding, and then bed. Finally,they are down, and we settle into grown-up conversation. I tell herabout my class, our discussions about “nigger,” and my worries aboutDavid.

“That’s the thing about the South,” Hilary says. I agree, but thenstart to wonder about her grandmother. I decide I do not want to know,not tonight.

I do tell her, however, about the fear I have every day inBurlington, crossing that street to get back and forth from my office,what I do to guard myself against the fear.

“Did you grow up hearing that?” She asks. Even though we are close, and alone, she does not say the word.

I start to tell her a story I have never told anyone. It is a storyabout the only time I remember being called a nigger to my face.

“I was a teenager, maybe 16. I was standing on a sidewalk, trying tocross a busy street after school, to get to the mall and meet myfriends. I happened to make eye contact with a white man in a car thatwas sort of stopped—traffic was heavy. Anyway, he just said it, kind ofspit it up at me.”

“Oh, that’s why,” I say, stunned, remembering the daily ritual I have just confessed to her. She looks at me, just as surprised.

December 2004

I AM WALKING DOWN a Burlington street with my friend, Anh. My formerquilting teacher, Anh is several years younger than I am. She has livedin Vermont her whole life. She is Vietnamese; her parents are white.Early in our friendship, she told me her father was a logger, as weremost of the men in her family. Generations of Vietnamese loggers in Vermont, I mused. It wasn’t until I started to describe her to someone else that I realized she must be adopted.

Anh and I talk about race, about being minorities in Burlington, butwe usually do it indirectly. In quilting class, we would give each otherlooks sometimes that said, You are not alone, or Oh, brother, when the subject of race came up in our class, which was made up entirely of white women, aside from the two of us.

There was the time, for instance, when a student explained why blackmen found her so attractive. “I have a black girl’s butt,” she said. Anhand I looked at each other: Oh, brother. We bent our heads back over our sewing machines.

As we walk, I tell Anh about my African-American autobiography class,the discussions my students and I have been having about “nigger.” Shelistens, and then describes to me the latest development in heron-again, offagain relationship with her 50-year-old boyfriend, anothernative Vermonter, a blond scuba instructor.

“He says everything has changed,” she tells me. “He’s going clean up the messes in his life.” She laughs.

Once, Anh introduced me to the boyfriend she had before the scubainstructor when I ran into them at a restaurant. He is also white.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” I said, and put out my hand.

“I’ve never slept with a black woman,” he said, and shook my hand.There was wonder in his voice. I excused myself and went back to mytable. Later, when I looked over at them, they were sitting side byside, not speaking.

Even though Anh and I exchanged our usual glances that night, Idoubted that we would be able to recover our growing friendship. Who could she be, dating someone like that? The next time I heard from her, months later, she had broken up with him.

I am rooting for the scuba instructor.

“He told me he’s a new person,” she says.

“Well, what did you say?” I ask her.

“In the immortal words of Jay-Z, I told him, ‘Nigga, please.’”

I look at her, and we laugh.

IN LIEU OF A FINAL class, my students come over for dinner. One byone, they file in. John takes coats while I pretend to look for thingsin the refrigerator. I can’t stop smiling.

“The books of your life” is the topic for tonight. I have asked themto bring a book, a poem, a passage, some art that has affected them.Hazel has brought a children’s book. Tyler talks about Saved by the Bell. Nate talks about Freud.

Dave has a photograph. Eric reads “The Seacoast of Despair” from Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

I read from Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid. Later I willwonder why I did not read “Incident” by Countee Cullen, the poem thathas been circulating in my head ever since we began our discussion about“nigger.” What held me back from bringing “Incident” to class? The question will stay with me for months.

The night of our dinner is an emotional one. I tell my students thatthey are the kind of class a professor dreams about. They give me a giftcertificate to the restaurant that David and I frequent. I give themcopies of Some of My Best Friends and inscribe each one. Ericdemands a hug, and then they all do; I happily comply. We talk aboutmeeting again as a class, maybe once or twice in the spring. The twostudents who will be abroad promise to keep in touch through ourListserv, which we all agree to keep going until the end of the schoolyear, at least. After they leave, the house is quiet and empty.

Weeks later, I post “Incident” on our Listserv and ask them torespond with their reactions. Days go by, then weeks. Silence. Aftermore prodding, finally Lauren posts an analysis of the poem, and thenher personal reactions to it. I thank her online, and ask for moreresponses. Silence.

I get e-mails and visits from these students about other matters,some of them race-related. Eric still comes by my office regularly. Oncehe brings his mother to meet me, a kind and engaging woman who gives mea redolent candle she purchased in France, and tells me her son enjoyed“African- American Autobiography.” Eric and I smile at each other.

A few days later, I see Eric outside the campus bookstore.

“What did you think about ‘Incident’?”

“I’ve been meaning to write you about it. I promise I will.”

In the meantime, Nigger is back in its special place on mybookshelf. It is tucked away so that only I can see the title on itsspine, and then only with some effort.

Emily Bernard is the editor of Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten and Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship.She is an assistant professor in the English department and the ALANAU.S. Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Vermont in Burlington.