''The Student as Nigger'' is the title of an essay and subsequent book by American educator Jerry Farber.

Publication history

The essay first appeared in the ''

Los Angeles Free Press The ''Los Angeles Free Press'', also called the "''Freep''", is often cited as the first, and certainly was the largest, of the underground newspapers of the 1960s. The ''Freep'' was founded in 1964 by Art Kunkin, who served as its publisher un ...

'' in 1967 and is often cited as one of the first

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground ...

publications to receive widespread recognition. It was reprinted over 500 times in the 1960s and was published in book form in 1969 by Contact Books and in 1970 by

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing ...

Synopsis

The essay, published during the height of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

, in which Farber was an active participant, draws an extended analogy between the status of students at

California State University The California State University (Cal State or CSU) is a public university system in California. With 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers enrolling 485,550 students with 55,909 faculty and staff, CSU is the largest four-year public univers ...

and the status of

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

s. Farber uses the term "

nigger In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...

" in the title to connote what he perceived as a "master-slave" relationship in modern educational settings in which students were overly constrained and intellectually de-motivated.

References

External links

Full text of the original essay
* Full text of first edition (1969) available free at Library Genesis {{DEFAULTSORT:Student as Nigger Education issues Political books 1970 non-fiction books 1967 essays Works originally published in American newspapers American essays