Nigga, Please!

If you're in New York, you'd better not drop the N-word in public, even if you're of the negro persuasion. Do people in New York not have children? Don't they know what happens when you tell someone that they can't use a word? Don't they have any radio stations that play music by colored people?

Here's where they lost me: "...it reflects a growing unease that the racial slur is now part of everyday conversation and that the taboo against its usage has been swept away." Wouldn't that be a good thing? If you're offended by it, don't you want the word to lose its power?

It's a generational thing. Basically, it boils down to a bunch of old black guys telling young black guys that they don't find the word offensive enough.

Leroy Comrie, the councilman who sponsored the bill, says the meaning of the word can't change. Really? All of the words I used to describe Afro-Americans in this bit were at one time perfectly acceptable ways for African-Americans to describe themselves. How many of them are still in use? Trust me, Leroy, one of these days "nigger" is going to sound just as ridiculous and outdated as "colored folk".

Forbidding something makes it cool, but nothing destroys the credibility of a word quite as much as letting spotty-faced teenagers overuse it. If you want people to stop using the word, you should be passing an ordinance that requires people to use the N-word. In a week, people would be done with it.