Richard Pryor's daughter reveals the shocking moment her white mother called her the N-word

Richard Pryor's daughter Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor recalled the time her white mother called her the N-word in her book, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me. 

The 59-year-old historian is the third oldest child of the late comedian, who died in 2005 at age 65. He shared her with Maxine Silverman.

Inside the pages of her book, which is part memoir and part racial history, the author recounts getting into a tense argument with Silverman, who she alleges hurled the racial slur at a then-12-year-old Stordeur Pryor.

'Even with what my mom said, with the ways my mom mishandled – that's the light way of saying it – the racial dynamic in our relationship, she loved me,' she said, according to People magazine.

That moment is behind what has become Stordeur Pryor's life work – unpacking the history of race and language in America.

She currently works as a history professor at Smith College, and previously published the book Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War.

Stordeur Pryor said she's always felt loved by her family, although her biracial identity has not been discussed with them 'on the level that I would like.'

The historian would like to broach the subject with curiosity, asking her cousins things like, '"Did you know that I was Black?" or "Were you told to behave in a particular way around it?"'

'...Because they're the ones who are living now,' she explained to the outlet.

Highlighting W.E.B. Du Bois' theory about double consciousness, the idea that Black people have two identities while confronted with race in society, she shared, 'I think there's even a double consciousness within my family.'

She elaborated, 'They're 100% my family – I have memories of them from a child, from my 20s, from my 30s, at my wedding, etcetera – and then there's this whole other element that I have one eye and ear open to all the time, a caution, that are operating in tandem with each other.'

Stordeur Pryor stated, 'So yeah, I haven't really processed the book with them, but I have processed it a lot with my girlfriends from high school. 

'It's been pretty amazing because they had no idea that I was going through what I was going through and are now trying to work through what about themselves allowed them to not see that truth. 

'And we've had some really beautiful, beautiful conversations – hard ones, but really beautiful.'

Stordeur Pryor said her mother never apologized for allegedly wielding the racially charged word against her.

'My mother never apologized for that,' she told NPR. 'I brought it up – I gave her plenty of chances. I brought it up a lot.'

The writer did not meet her father until she was six years old. 

'He struggled to show up as a parent,' she told CNN. 'And I never felt funny enough, or creative enough, or Black enough to be his daughter.'

Later in his career, after a trip to Kenya in East Africa, the standup comic stopped using the N-word in his sets.