Chief Judge Preska Is On This Street Lingo Thing Fo' Shizzle

Don't try to tell this judge how folks talk out there in the real world.

Black people are not N—, even if they call themselves [that]… on occasion. It is not a term of endearment.

— Muhammad Ibn Bashir, the lawyer for Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, in the latter’s public corruption trial. The disagreement over the term arose when Chief Judge Loretta Preska (S.D.N.Y.) denied a request to play a recorded conversation that Bashir contends would prove that Stevenson’s alleged accomplice was really his enemy. Judge Preska countered that the word can function as a term of endearment in certain situations, invoking Bashir’s quotable retort.

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