and teacher is held to a higher standard than students.
however, i commend the teacher for using the situation as a teachable moment, and i hope he gets his job back.
the n word is not acceptable for black people to use liberally...i am black and i don't use the word, and i doubt the obamas do either. but i hear kids, of all races, use the word.
i think what a lot of people don't get is intent and meaning, and that's the problem with this incident. i doubt those kids intended to use the word the way a racist would use the word, and neither did the teacher. kids...of all races...seem to use the word in a way that means something different than what the word used to mean. i have white friends who use the word "redneck" with each other, but i would never feel comfortable using that word. i am sure the same is true with other racial/ethnic groups.
and of course...we have a generation of black kids who've grown up listening to "musicians" who use the word liberally. i don't like it...at all...but the word has morphed into various meanings, not all of which are negative...at least from the pov of some speakers and listeners.
bottom line...those who are not in the habit of using racial slurs just don't use them, in any context. i cring when i hear my friends use the word (the way chris rock does) to distinguish himself as something other than those n's. and i certainly hope black kids listen to richard pryor's commentary about that word...and why he stopped using the word.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15iht-edjackson.html
Richard Pryor's death puts into painful relief hip-hop's exploitation of the N-word. In 1993, Snoop Dogg said he used the word because "it's me." In 1996, Def Jam founder Russell Simmons said, "When we say 'nigger' now, it's very positive. Now all white kids who buy into hip-hop culture call each other 'nigger' because they have no history with the word other than something positive. ... When black kids call each other 'a real nigger' or 'my nigger,' it means you walk a certain way, ... have your own culture that you invent so you don't have to buy into the U.S. culture that you're not really a part of. It means we're special. We have our own language."
In a documentary last year on the N-word, actor and rapper Ice Cube claimed the word was a defiant "badge of honor." Last month, in an interview on NBC's "Today" show, rapper 50 Cent said of his massive use of the N-word: "I'm not using it as a racial slur. ... It's just slang."
Talk about reinventing the N-wheel. All these things were precisely what the comedian Pryor claimed at the beginning of the 1970s when he made a conscious decision to splatter his routine with the word. In his autobiography, "Pryor Convictions," he said, "Nigger. And so this one night I decided to make it my own. Nigger. I decided to take the sting out of it. Nigger. As if saying it over and over again would numb me and everybody else to its wretchedness. Nigger. Said it over and over like a preacher singing hallelujah."
Pryor claimed, "Saying it changed me, yes it did. It gave me strength, let me rise above ..."
Pryor rose to commercial stardom. Like many African-Americans, I bought his albums in my teens and early 20s, and no one was more brilliant on a dazzling variety of political and social topics. At a more immature time, he seemed to me a rugged complement to my Bill Cosby family-life albums.
As the 1970s wound down, it was spectacularly evident that embracing the N-word did not give Pryor the strength to rise above demons. His dismal childhood among whorehouses and barroom violence in Peoria, Illinois, mushroomed into Hollywood drug binges and threats to wives at gunpoint.
= new reply since forum marked as read
trying to get thoughts across on this issue it tough.
