Wendy Shalit and the dearth of cool guys. But let a white liberal professor use the word, even abstractly, to discuss its linguistic or sociological power and he has supposedly trampled on black sensibilities and must be punished. Thank God not all words are so taboo.
Many black students have living relatives who have witnessed lynchings.
Retaliation can be expected. We need to understand at what point our culture recognized that the insult was taboo. I would be more concerned if Professor Hardy had ignored it. Julia Pierre and her friends miss the party if they listen with only half an ear. These people fail to recognize that the only noble character in the entire book is Jim, who ultimately teaches Huck the life lessons his father and other deplorable whites could not.