IMO, The constant effort to ‘re-invent’ or ‘re-purpose’ this vulgar and hateful slur is nothing more than an excuse to circumvent its history/ baggage and further remove responsibility for the dehumanizing of an entire race. HAYELL. NAW. NOT having it!!! As one commenter says, “Why? No other racial or ethnic slur is used with such a broad acceptance. Blacks of American decent have mainly perpetuated this. No other group allow.the.use of.racial and ethnic slurs to.describe themselves. The words spics, kikes, wops, wet backs are not.going.to.be used as a term of.endearment by anyone. Only blacks do this, again, why?”
“If there is one thing certain about the modern n-word — a shifty organism that has managed to survive on these shores for hundreds of years by lurking in dark corners, altering its form, splitting off into a second specimen and constantly seeking out new hosts, all the while retaining its basic and vile DNA — it is that it defies black-and-white interpretations and hard-and-fast rules.
The word is too essential as an urban slang term to be placed in a casket and buried, as NAACP delegates attempted to do in a 2007 mock “funeral” for the word. It is too ingrained in youth culture to be eliminated from city streets, as the New York City Council attempted with a symbolic resolution banning the word the same year. And more than likely, it will prove too complex and nuanced to be policed by football referees wielding yellow flags and penalties. Never mind the troublesome optics of a group of mostly white NFL executives dictating the language rules of a majority-black player pool.
If anything, in 2014, it is the very notion of banning the n-word that appears dead and fit for burial. It was a long and noble fight, waged largely — but not exclusively — by an older generation for which the word is inseparable from the brutality into which it was born. If there is still a meaningful n-word debate left to have, it is over context, ownership and the degree to which it should be tethered to its awful history — or set free from it.” (The Washington Post)
