By Cheryl Mattox Berry
From rappers to athletes, everyone has been weighing in on use of the n-word since the story broke about alleged bullying and crude language being used by Miami Dolphins players.
Many Milliennials, children born between the 1980s and 2000s, don’t see what the fuss is about. They say the word is in chart-topping songs, and blacks and Hispanics call each other the n-word as a term of endearment.
I’ve got suggestion: Ask a black person 80 years old or older whether it’s an affectionate word that should be bandied about. Tell them to describe what it was like growing up in a segregated United States where you were considered not a second-class citizen but a no-class citizen by whites. Ask them how they felt when someone called them that demeaning word.
Next, watch video of speeches by members of the Ku Klux Klan. When they referred to blacks, they used the n-word and a lot of other derogatory names. I don’t recall feeling the love after watching those old clips.
You’re probably thinking all that stuff happened in the past, and things are different now. Well, yes, some things have changed. That doesn’t mean you can take a word with such a painful past, spin it around, urbanize it, and all of a sudden it’s okay to use. The n-word is part of America’s shameful history, and it needs to stay in the past.
Luckily, I never heard any of the adults around me use the n-word when I was growing up as a black child in the South. They considered that coarse language not befitting those who were striving for a better life.
They knew firsthand what a vile word it was because they grew up in Mississippi, where whites used it freely in their presence. So, they made a conscious effort to delete it from their vocabulary. You should do the same and encourage your friends to drop it, too.