S-Train links to N-Word Eradication Movement, which encourages everyone - including blacks - to cease using the N-word for any purpose. Their philosophy is summed up by this quote:

Supporters of the N-word Eradication Movement believe that the only purpose for anyone to use the word “nigger”, its derivatives, or any racial slur, is while educating others about why they should not use them.

I think the idea is about right, but I would expand that exception just a little bit.

In my view, it is generally OK to use the N-word, or any other word, when talking about the word itself. This includes the anti-N-word campaigns discussed above, but it also includes value neutral linguistic discussions, e.g., discussing the etymology of the N-word, explaining its role in our relative nonuse of the innocent word negro, or simply to beat somebody over the head for getting upset over a red herring like niggard. Or, it may be OK to use the word when quoting someone directly (not L.A. Times or CNN-style “quoting,” but an actual quotation), especially if part of the purpose of the quote was to demonstrate the quoted person’s prejudice.

That’s just nibbling around the edges, though. The Renounce N-Word Movement’s basic idea is spot-on, so here’s the well-deserved “Amen” from the blogosphere that S-Train requested. When blacks use the n-word, it inevitably sends a mixed signal, or worse, to non-blacks. Regardless of the speaker’s intent, the message that the hearer gets is “gee, now that the targets of this racial slur are using the word, it must not really be a slur anymore.”

I suspect that most blacks who use the N-word do indeed believe that the N-word is a big deal when used by non-blacks. Even that rule has exceptions, however. For some, the theory seems to be that anyone can use the N-word, as long as we all know they don’t really mean it. Case in point: I grew up in Altadena, a predominantly black, lower-middle class suburb of Los Angeles. I attended K-6 in public schools, where my black classmates used the word every day. Many used it without regard to race. I’m only a few shades darker than the average albino myself, but I got called a n—– as often as anyone else. And I called them that, too. No one cared.

My parents, of course, did care. When I came home using that dreaded word, they advised me that the N-word was (1) a terribly derogatory word that (2) meant “black.” Both propositions were inconsistent with how I’d heard the word used first-hand, so I didn’t believe them. From then on, I avoided using the word around my parents, but said it all the time on the school yard.

Fast forward to my “adult” life, at age 19. By then, lilly-white private schools had taught me that the N-word was off-limits. Even the few black students in those private schools - unlike the scores I’d known in public schools before - agreed that the term was a hurtful one that should never be used, so I hadn’t uttered it in years. Just for old time’s sake, I used it one last time at 19. I was trying on clothes at a department store, and came across a pair of pitch black pants that would have looked ridiculous on me. For one thing, the style does not match mine; at all. For another, they were way too tight - skin tight. So in what can only be called an asinine attempt at alliteration, in a conversation that I thought was private, I quipped to an old friend that “these pants would make me look like a nude n—–.”

So much for that “private” conversation. A black gentleman, who looked like he was in his early to mid-20s, confronted me on the way out. His beef? That I’d used the dreaded n-word? Nah, he couldn’t have cared less about that. All he wanted to know was “what’s wrong with looking like a n—–?”