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

[OriginalGeek]

26. I do not use that word

because I was raised in a fundamentalist, Baptist, racist household and community. I was in my mid 20s before I ever even heard the word used where it wasn't specifically meant to be a disgusting, degrading insult. That kind of overt racism is one reason I left the church.

fast forward 20 years and I was the manager of a small warehouse. I hired a (white) kid to load and unload trucks. The first day he was very quiet and mainly all about learning his job duties. The second day he began opening up and telling me about himself. The third day everything was "Nigga this" and "nigga that" and "my nigga"... I was highly uncomfortable and told him straight up he could not use that word in my warehouse. He looked at me genuinely puzzled and asked why not? I said it's in incredibly offensive word, surely you know that? That's when he told me a little more about himself - he grew up in a 99.99999 percent black neighborhood. "All my friends are black. All my life I have known almost no white kids my age - I hang out with black people, I play with black people, I date black girls. My friends and I are niggas and we always will be and nothing you believe can change that." (In fact, his neighborhood is less than 4 miles from where Trayvon was murdered)

I literally did not know what to do except explain to him that I never heard that word come from a place of love - he said that's the only place he knew of it from.

Now, of course he knew that there were racists who used the "N" word as a hateful slur but he didn't know those people and they didn't hang around his neighborhood very long. But that isn't the word he was using.

What I mainly learned from that is I get to decide what I mean in my heart and I get choose how to live my life but I don't get to decide what is in another's heart and I damn sure don't get to dictate how another should conduct him or herself.

Out of respect for me and my position he understood that while at work he was no longer in his neighborhood and he behaved appropriately when corporate visitors were around. When it was just us I did nothing to hamper his free expression.