Now as someone who is not black, it seems almost inappropriate for me to discuss this issue because I have had no experience dealing with the word. I am, however, aware of the weight that the word holds in the eyes of black Americans and the long, painful history behind it. As looked-down upon as the word is though, it seems to be a polarizing issue among black Americans; some believe it is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to say it, black or non-black, and some believe it is perfectly fine when black people are using it.

What spawned this discussion in my mind is a few weeks ago, NBA player Matt Barnes got into a scuffle with Serge Ibaka, another player on the opposing team. Here is a video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7MdUpa8ETQ

Barnes comes to the defense of his teammate, Blake Griffin, and gets an ejection. Later after the game was over, Barnes posted the following message on Twitter (which he deleted quickly after):

@Matt_Barnes22 Love my teammates like family, but I’m DONE standing up for these *****s! All this shit does is cost me money

The censored word, as you can guess, is the n-word. And later Barnes issued an apology.

Should he have had to apologize though? Let’s take away the fact that he is an NBA player and he needs to watch his mouth anyway, as do the rest of the players, if it was just anyone that said this, would it have come under such scrutiny for him using the word? Here, Charles Barkley discusses the use of the n-word with his TNT crew:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5teRxMqaPQ

What Barkley basically said was, Barnes was wrong to tweet it publicly, but he uses it all the time with his friends and it is really just a word. “White America doesn’t dictate how me and Shaq speak to each other.” He may have a point, the intent  of using the word amongst friends may not be malicious and just friendly, and most of the time I would argue that it is, but according to NBA legend Isiah Thomas, it should not be used at ALL.

http://www.vladtv.com/video/178750/isiah-thomas-grant-hill-continue-debate-over-n-word-use/

Thomas lists the dictionary definition of the word and says to be using the word in the first place would be demeaning to black people, regardless of the intent in which it is being used.

So what do you guys think? Should the intent be taken into account when using the word since the word been tossed around so much that it has basically lost a lot of its impact, or should the historical struggle surrounding the word never be forgotten and “abolish” the word, so to speak?