A house on my street is rented by 3 young black guys and they seem to be pretty nice kids. Last night they had friends over and it was a bit loud but that didn't bother me... What did bother me was that all night long I heard them say "N***a" a million times. It was getting on my nerves sooo bad. I know this is slang, but something about it irritates the hell out of me. I noticed many Hispanic kids use it also.

Truth be known, I am not much older than these kids on my street, so it is not as if my perspective is that of a guy generations apart from these kids. I understand it is not used in a derogatory sense, but it sounds uneducated and trashy. I am curious... to any African Americans on this blog, would you allow your kids to speak in this manner?

Maybe I am turning into an old man!!!

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SIXERSFAN

I feel the same way noone should be throwing a slur around even as slang..

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I agree with you. I work and live around alot of black kids and adults and they use the word '******' to describe each other all the time. But if a white boy like myself were to use it to describe one of them they'd have my head. That is an interesting concept. In my opinion using racial slurs or any other kind of demeaning term toward another person makes you just as bad for having to go that route. I mean, Yeh, its true there are alot of people who fit that term, and they are of every race known to man, not just blacks.

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I have a problem with that word too. I have been told by people of different races that it's a term of endearment that only blacks can use with their own. Well, a Latino kid told me that, and he uses it.

I know you want responses from people that are black about this, but I have to add that I watched in amazement as my daughter, and her friends were singing along to that racist Kanye West. Now first off he was raised by a Black Panther, and a college educated mother of some means. The point being he is given permission to throw that word around just because of the color of his skin. BEST OF ALL my kid paid for those CD's, and when the "N" word came into the lyrics they all clamed up. How do you pay for music you can't recite? How?

Since the marches regarding illegal immigration I've heard the word WOP used again. I hate that word, but when it kept being used nobody flinched. That "N" word just don't say it.

It's really healthy to take a word that is meant to hurt you and disable it by embracing that word. But if you then take offense to that word when someone else says it, you haven't taken the bite out of the word and are creating a double standard. Also the meaning of words change over time. There is evidence that the N word was much less offensive in the 19th century. It would nice to see that word get so overused to the point of meaninglessness, but I will stay with the late 20th century sensability and not use it.

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All comments made by me on his board are given freely and probably worth what you paid for them.

i never use the word. no one in my family uses the word. i am astonished when i hear the word used so frequently. it wasn't that way when i was a teen (way back in the 90s). it's largely due to hip hop, i believe.

the "logic" behind its use is that you want to take the power from the word. reclaim it, so to speak. think of the word "queer." it was highly offensive at one time. now, you have queer studies courses and queer eye for the straight guy.

the other word is just TOO powerful for that. it should be banished from everyday vocabulary.

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SWCC/Graduate Hospital

"The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind. " - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

WOP is the abbreviation for Without Papers. It was used on Ellis Island to designate immigrants of all nationalities who arrived without proper documentation or lost their paperwork in transit. It's unfortunate that it is now only applied to one nationality.

"Same as it ever was".
David Byrne

I sometimes think if you take out the N-word, "jawhn" and "sayin?" communication among 30% of Philly's black teenagers would collapse due to lack of nouns. At least when they are using the "n-word" you know they are talking about a person, typically though not exclusively black. With "jawhn" it could be anything - person, place, inanimate object. I've literally heard sentences with "jawhn" that were the equivalent of "I took the thing with thing over to the place that has the thing by the thing." What ever happened to trying to actually communicate useful information with slang?

Homegirl, I knew that's what the word meant. My child has been called it enough. My exhusband is Italian. That was used primarily against Italians. That's why I mentioned it here because it's I'm hearing it geared toward Mexicans now.

Oh Sean I can not go without using the word "jawn" for one day. LOL I heard jawn used about a hoagie, a thumb hit by a hammer, and of course a CD player. LOL I was like Emily Lattella from the old SNL. "What's all this I keep hearing about this jawn?"

I saw this jawn at the jawn and i ran my stuff and the jawn gave me the slip and the jawn was sayin i was all up in her face with my stuff and called her jawn on the jawn.

ha.

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