Why do so many white people want to use the "N" word?

[MineralMan]

22. Good question. When I was in grammar school, I learned all

of those words by the third grade. A couple of times, I trotted them out in front of my mother. She was pretty amazing, and never, ever lost her cool when teaching her kids stuff. I think the first one I learned was "fuck." I asked my mother what it meant, since it wasn't clear from the context where I heard it. She explained that it was a word for sex, but that it was one that alarmed and upset a lot of people, so it wasn't a word I should use. That made sense, kind of like I wasn't supposed to tell people they were fat (learned that at age 5).

It didn't take long before I learned to tell when words were being used to hurt people. I heard the words "spic" and "beaner" aimed at the Hispanic kids who made up about a third of the school. It pissed them off. So, it was easy to tell that those words weren't a good idea to use anywhere. The reason was that they caused pain and angered people.

It wasn't too difficult. Since it was never my goal to hurt or anger people, I just didn't use any of those words, but learned other ones I could use that didn't have that effect. I was always surprised that so many people didn't understand that. I still am.