CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 12Colonialism, slavery, and tradeRace, History, and American SocietyLaw, Rights, and Freedoms

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 44 of the 44 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

African American Enslavement, Speech Act Theory, and the Law

Open access
Brown, Alexander·2019·Journal of African American Studies
DOI 10.1007/s12111-019-09431-z
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

In the context of African American enslavement and the legacy of that enslavement, do some uses of the word “nigger” possess the power to enslave? It goes without saying that the words “negro,” “nigger,” “colored,” and “black” are an important part of the language and discourse of African American enslavement—as terms used by slave owners, slave traders, slave catchers, and slaves themselves; as terms still used today by people living with the legacy of slavery; and as terms highlighted by academics in explaining these events and various other aspects of the African American experience. However, the aim of this article is to explore the role of these words as instruments of racial enslavement within the USA—past and present. To be more precise, the article argues that in several different ways relating to bodies of law, enforcement of law (or lack thereof), and the scope of law, the words “negro,” “nigger,” “colored,” and “black” come to not simply mean “a slave” but actually to make African Americans slaves.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s12111-019-09431-z

Cites

44 of 44 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Engerman, S. L., et al. (Eds.). (2011). Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. Hurd, J. C. (1858–62) The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
  3. Langton, R. (1990) Subordination, silence, and pornography’s authority. In R. Post (Ed.), Censorship and silencing: Practices of cultural regulation. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities.
  4. Lee, H. (1989). To kill a mocking bird. London: Arrow Books.
  5. Northup, S. (2008). Twelve years a slave. Bedford: Applewood Books.
  6. Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and social death. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 12

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Brown, A.
Affiliations
University of East Anglia (GB)
Corresponding author
Brown, Alexander
ORCID
Brown, Alexander
Venue
Journal of African American Studies
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2019-06-08
Volume
23
Issue
3
Pages
162-177
ISSN
  • 1559-1646 (ISSN-L)
  • 1936-4741
DOI
10.1007/s12111-019-09431-z
OpenAlex
W2953925860
Cited by
12
References
44
Citations by year
2025: 4 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2
FWCI
6.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of African American Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • UEA Digital Repository (University of East Anglia) (acceptedVersion)
Funders
University of East Anglia
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Colonialism, slavery, and trade
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Race, History, and American Society
  • Social Sciences › Law › Law, Rights, and Freedoms
Keywords
racial slurs, nigger, speech act theory, slavery legacy, racial discrimination in law, law enforcement, African American language

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review