Word: nigger
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...subject that Miss Hellman treats with particular humor and good sense is the uneasy relationship between post-ghetto Jews and Negroes. The play opens with Berney singin' on his guitar "De life of a nigger ain't much good..." a point to which the Halpern maid, who overhears him, speaks with some feeling. In a later scene, Berney urges social action on a Negro who mugs him, more or less to shut him up. As these two episodes perhaps suggest, there is considerable overlap in the construction. Since a scene or two might be cut in the process of tightening...
...rear with his cane. After a few bourbons and ginger at the open bar, he asked a Negro waitress, Mrs. Ethel Hill, 30, something about a firemen's fund. She said she did not know what he meant. "Don't say no to me, you nigger, say no, sir," said Zantzinger. He flailed her with the cane. She fled to the kitchen...
...Negro is white, or that they themselves are Negro. But this attempt to circumvent the racial barrier by pretending that everyone stands on the same side can only increase the real distance between the races. As you have pointed out, while a Negro may call another Negro a nigger, for a white man to assume this liberty is disastrous. This barrier, this vital difference must be acknowledged if it is to be understood and destroyed. The problem of the "liberal" white man, therefore, is not that he is too race-conscious, but that he is not race-conscious enough...
...social, interaction. The white man must become as acutely aware of his "whiteness" as the Negro is of his "Negroness." He must be made to feel as much pain, as much frustration, anger and hatred at being called an ofay as a Negro feels when he is called a nigger. And he must come to feel his alienation from Negro society as sharply as the Negro feels his isolation from white society...
...after four years of sweating Harvard sweat, it will still mean the same thing. Of course, when I pin my diploma on my shirt, the white world won't act like it doesn't respect me. I'll still be "the nigger" but, when I show my trophy, the world will bend to necessity. It's so funny. There'll be no real necessity--just habit. I might even, some day, become Ralph Bunche or, in forty years, Bobby Kennedy. But then, I'll still be nigger to the man on the train. Yes, it's funny, pathetically funny...