This is on point, a Magna Chacrabardi.

There's something that caught me off guard in the very first sentence of Say It Loud,

Randall Kennedy's latest book.

The Harvard Law School professor states, quote,

The writings that follow are the impressions of a black, slash Negro, slash colored, slash African-American law professor born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1954, four months after the Supreme Court handed down Brown V Board of Education.

End quote.

Black, Negro, colored, African-American professor Kennedy, first of all, it's great to have you back on on point. Why did you do that in the very first sentence of your book?

First of all, it's so nice to be on your wonderful show. So thanks for inviting me.

Now to answer your question, I wanted to put that in the very first sentence of the book to signal right off that

I'm not into fashion and that I'm going to speak very forthrightly and straightforwardly in the language that I prefer to deal with the race question in American life.

And what is that language?

Straight forward language and a language that doesn't bow to arbiters of taste that really don't know much about our history.

So I was quite aware that there would be some people who might take offense, for instance, at me using the word Negro.

In fact, I have an essay in the book about the way in which black Americans have named and renamed themselves over the course of American history.

And that essay was prompted by a student who complained about my use of the word Negro.

And among the things I said to the student was that I started using the word Negro quite often in 1983, 1984.

Because of the directive of my boss, who was my boss?

My boss was Mr. Civil Rights, Justice Thurgood Marshall.

He used the word Negro.

He used the word Negro, WB Dubois used the word Negro, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the word Negro, made grubbers used the word Negro.

Rose Aparks used the word Negro.

If those folks could use the word Negro, it's good enough for me.

...