another "Negro" in quotes

[Jonathan Lighter]

2010 Malcolm Gladwell in _The New Yorker_ (Oct. 4) 42: On Wednesday [Feb. 3,
1960], students from Greensboro's "Negro" secondary school, Dudley High,
joined in, and the number of protesters swelled to eighty.

So even though it really was a Negro school, attended by actual people who
actually called themselves "Negroes," it is potentially offensive (I
suppose) to use the word in the once stylistically impeccable _New Yorker_
without scare quotes that say, "We know that you think this word is/was
insulting/demeaning but that was white racists talking, not us!"

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org