THE CHOICE: When 16 Year-Old Alyssa Douglas Calls For The President's Assassination on Twitter

[LibertyLover]

48. The portion of your post about kids using the n word

reminded me of an incident I witnessed, now close to 20 years ago, at the law firm I worked at in DC. One of the paralegals, a lovely Cuban woman who had been married to an African-American, was raising their daughter as an African-American, and who after she divorced her first husband had married an African-American man with 2 sons, was chatting with a couple of the word processors about the weekend. I should note that the word processors were also African-Americans. Anyway, Missy (not her real name) had had a rough weekend - her older stepson had been arrested for shoplifting. Her commentary included several uses of the n word to describe him and his friend who had also been arrested. Meanwhile, one of the associates and I, both white, were in an office across the hall, able to hear the entire conversation and were just sitting in total bemusement. Finally one of the word processors looked over, saw us and the expressions on our faces and burst into laughter, outing us to the group with "you should see the looks on X and Y's faces". I had the chance to talk to Missy one on one later in the day because we had to drive to a client's office and pick up a signed document. She made no excuses for using the n word, said that her sons and daughter used it all the time with their friends and so did she and her husband. She also told me it was ok for her to use it because she was considered to be African-American by her husband's family, and the rest of their family were indeed African-Americans, but that for me to use was racist. My response was that a word was demeaning and racist no matter who or how it was used. I won't get into the dressing down I got from her for using the word "niggardly", although she apologized when I showed her the word's derivation.