The N-Wordz

Those who at all followed the trial of George Zimmerman cannot have missed the prosecution’s star witness, Rachel Jeantel. Her information may have been no good, but her entertainment value was through the roof. Since the end of the trial Jeantel has been making the media rounds. Earlier this week she appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, where she tried to make the distinction between “nigger” and “nigga” — a distinction that will not be unfamiliar to twenty-somethings, rap fans, or anyone who attended a public high school.

In a new piece, my National Review colleague Kevin D. Williamson takes up that philological debate. It’s one with all the intellectual merit of an Insane Clown Posse album, but it has long been a subject of media fascination and even of academic “scholarship.” If you want to call it that.

What has been the result? It may not be too much to say: a country where black and white Americans, perhaps more than ever, speak different languages.

You can read Kevin’s piece, “A Vexatious Word,” here.