The.N word

When I was little, more than half a century ago, I had occasion to use the N word . singing a silly ditty starting with"Daniel Boone was a man"

My father heard from another room and with very memorable use of words and actions convinced me I never wanted to use that word again. I grew up in a rural town where others had different examples at home and some older folks routinely used racial slurs.

Now I live in a world where I literally never hear the N word live, though I frequently hear it in recorded music and comedy routines delivered to mixed audiences. I understand white suburban youth, exposed to the word through media, use it some. I was curious about resurgence of a word that I never had to tell my children never to use and did some research. My findings are that hip Black people CAN use the N word and in fact can use it like Tony Soprano associates use the F word. For them it is the rough equivalent of "fella." For white folks the term is never to be spoken. I'm going to have a talk about it with my 20 year old son ... Cause I never had occasion to correct him.

 

Don't Make the Black Kids Angry --- Colin Flaherty

Because the use of that language is often to slander or offend, I don't personally make a habit of its use (TIC), but the fact is there was a generation raised not too long ago (my grandfather) of its use simply referring to a description of a person. I was in my teens before I realized Brazilian Nuts were actually called Brazilian Nuts.

I don't recall having to address this specifically with my kids, but I'm proud to say they turned-out pretty good.

We return to the plea of of Rodney King ... bless his heart.

Conflict will continue to increase, though, until the day it is vanquished mightily.

PRESS ON!

 

Given the history of the word, I continue to be surprised that black people continue to use it.

 

When I was in high school auto mechanics class in the 70s, one thing we did not do was to rebuild automatic transmissions. There was a local guy who had a transmission shop that we would take them to. I don't know the real name of the shop, everybody just called it "N****r Eddie's". So one day it was my turn to take a transmission to him. My instructor sent me over with instructions on what he wanted done. Now Eddie worked out of an old Texaco station, and his office could be seen thru the big window they had on the front. As I approached the door, he was at his desk, and I am saying to myself, "Well, I cannot walk up and call him 'N****r Eddie', do I call him 'Eddie'? 'Mr. Eddie'?" As I am pondering this as I walk up, the phone rings, and he picks it up and says, "N****r Eddie's!" So he called himself that. To him it was just a word. He was a very nice man, huge, but gentle as a lamb.

Y'all can call me ignorant, but I don't understand why blacks allow a word to have such control over their emotions. It's just a word. You can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner.

 

Racist. Remove yourself from public discourse immediately.

Seriously though, I wonder about the seeming rash of cases of teenage white kids using the n-word, and maybe it's not a rash at all, but we just see it more now with social media. And maybe the instances are being trumped up for political purposes. But I can't help wondering about a generation of white kids being raised in a relatively peaceful racial environment, listening to rap music and basically being bombarded with that language. It makes me wonder if a lot of kids just don't see the big deal about it, particularly when they're out with their friends.

 

My parents grew up in East Texas and I grew up in Pasadena. If you know anything about those places you can imagine what I heard a lot as a kid. It wasn’t until I got to Austin that I realized this is not how everyone thinks and speaks.

 

I can't remember who made the insightful post on this board, but they said it is hard to understand how a group of people can let themselves react so emotionally to a word.

At some point in your life you have to have enough confidence in yourself to know exactly who you are, and what others may say negatively about you is meaningless.

 

That's true ... and also ... I learned from my time in Austin ... everyone who's not a white male is a victim.

 

My parents grew up in the 50's - 60's in small town Texas households that used the word to some degree or other. My mother's family, who were basically poor white trash, used it (and still do) much more. Neither of my parents were imprinted by their upbringing in this regard and to this day they will neither use nor tolerate the use of the N. word. Meanwhile, neither of my parents seems to see an issue in referring to illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America as 'wetbacks'.

Blacks and latinos have their own racist white-bread terms for Anglos in cracker and bolillo respectively which, as far as I can tell, are accepted words within their cultures.

When trying to understand the shifting target of actual racism and why some people can say a certain word while others cannot, the only sense I can make of any of it is just about everyone is full of **** and living their own myth and hypocrisy.