Wednesday 31 January 2007

Banning a Word

A story from a few days ago: the mayor of a Texas town considered banning the "N word" (let's just be mature and say it - "nigger" - this isn't the Dark Lord Voldemort we're dealing with).

The very idea of banning a word from public usage with a fine for breaking the law is ridiculous. "Nigger" isn't a nice word and I certainly wouldn't use it regularly, but at the end of the day it's a WORD, for pete's sake. You simply can't infringe on people's right to use a word, however repellent you may find it.

Interestingly, one must consider how this would affect the town's black population, as many black people use the phrase, "Wassup, my nigger?" or derivations thereof as greetings in common speech. Would they get fined, too? That, of course brings us round to the topic of how "offensive" the word can really be when blacks use it themselves, but that's just pernickity, right?

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