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Some of my ‘brothers’ in England will tell you that Hip-hop and Rap music have legitimized use of the term “Nigger” among large sways of Black and non-Black people in America, and that we, too, in England should get with the program and throw off our shackles from the past.
I am, apparently, old-fashioned because I still get offended by use of the N-word. I don’t care who you are or how you say it. I am still likely to smack you in the mouth at a mere whisper of the word.
I certainly wouldn’t be teaching my children to use a term that still holds currency as a mark of their supposed inferiority. Maybe it has something to do with class – not to mention respect for self and others – that Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and others I admire, refuse to engage with the word or those who use it.
Selective amnesia is no indication of social advancement in my book. Adoption of a horrible word by certain segments of “street corner society” does not prevent neo-Nazis from wanting to kill Barack Obama and other African-Americans because they see us as the “niggers” we call ourselves.
If Jewish people can rightly campaign against “Holocaust denial” in the twenty-first century, it must be more than appropriate for us to still be offended by a word that has lost none of its potency simply because some Black people use it to address each other.
History is not that long ago, and we’re still obviously reeling from the remnants of it, even if some of us refuse to see it or prefer to wear blinkers.
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