The word negro makes me uncomfortable. I never hear it, but I occasionally read it. There’s a pretty famous book by sociolinguist Walt Wolfram (Professor of English, North Carolina State University) called A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech published in 1969. Every time I see the book, the title makes me cringe, but I don’t think Wolfram had any intention to use a word he felt was pejorative. Indeed, he was trying to make the point that African Americans’ speech was not a sloppy, substandard use of language but rather a rule-governed variety of English in its own right. And if you’re not convinced then consider this: in his speech, “I Have a Dream” (delivered in 1963), Martin Luther King Jr. used the term negro fifteen times. I, of course, did not live through the 1960s. I’m part of a generation that seems to have a collective gut feeling that the word is unacceptable.  Read more ›