{"id":9886,"date":"2015-06-23T13:56:22","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T13:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9886"},"modified":"2015-06-23T13:56:22","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T13:56:22","slug":"n-word-burns-my-ears-even-when-potus-uses-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9886","title":{"rendered":"‘N-word’ burns my ears, even when POTUS uses it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Barack Obama’s use of the “n-word” the other day in an interview made me cringe.<\/p>\n

OK, he’s the president of the United States. He’s partly of African-American descent. The subject of his media interview was racism. So he’s entitled, I guess, to use the word.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/245793-obama-uses-n-word-to-provoke-talk-about-racism<\/p>\n

But I hate the sound of the word. I hate seeing it written. I hate hearing it spoken. In the words of one of my sons, “It makes my ears bleed.”<\/p>\n

The use of the word had become a staple of black comedians’ efforts at some sort of self-deprecation. They have felt it’s OK to use the word, drawing laughs in the belief of audience members that “It’s all right for them<\/em> to use the word.”<\/p>\n

Where I come from, it’s not all right for anyone to use a word intended as a racial slur.<\/p>\n

That includes gang members who tag buildings with the word and who use it in casual conversation among themselves.<\/p>\n

Rap artists have bastardized the word with crazy spellings meant for mispronunciation. It’s not the actual “n-word,” but you hear it said and you know what it means.<\/p>\n

According to The Hill, Obama told an interviewer: \u201cRacism, we are not cured of it.\u00a0And it\u2019s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n—– in public. That\u2019s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments, of course, have come in the wake of that hideous massacre in Charleston and the intense debate it has launched — yet again — over whether racism still poisons our society.<\/p>\n

Of course it does.<\/p>\n

I get what the president says about the impolite use of the “n-word” and whether it can bring an end to the racist strains that infect so many of us today. Striking it from our vocabulary, though, is a start.<\/p>\n\n

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Barack Obama’s use of the “n-word” the other day in an interview made me cringe. OK, he’s the president of the United States. He’s partly of African-American descent. The subject of his media interview was racism. So he’s entitled, I guess, to use the word. http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/245793-obama-uses-n-word-to-provoke-talk-about-racism But I hate the sound of the word. I … Continue reading ‘N-word’ burns my ears, even when POTUS uses it<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[172,540,927,3170,3709,3808,4762],"class_list":["post-9886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-african-american-descent","tag-barack-obama","tag-charleston-shooting","tag-n-word","tag-president-of-the-united-states","tag-racism","tag-the-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}