'Top Gear' host Clarkson says gets final warning over racism row

[pennylane100]

8. First let me say that there is no excuse for Clarkson's actions.

However, as a person who grew up in Briton, that was a common rhyme that all kids learned. I also lived in the UK at a time when there were very few people of color. and I had no idea of how hurtful and insulting that word was.

When I returned on a visit after living here and other countries for several years, I remember going shopping with my mother and she mentioned that she was going to knit a brown sweater and asked the lady in the store that she was looking for a n***r brown. (This was in the seventies and incredibly they had that exact terminology on the label of the wool)
I told my mom that that word was insulting and it would be better not to use it. Mom had no idea what the word meant and said indignantly, "that does not seem fair, we had the word first."

While it was understandable that people of my parents generation may have not known better, the same cannot be said of
Clarkson who most definitely should have known better.