Responding to you and joemike...
First, let me make it clear that despite the fact that I see my way clear to use the "N" word I do not use it.
My problem with Ice Cube's rationale, the reason I find it self-serving, is that he only called out white folks for using the word.
Had he also called out his homies for using it, rather than having embraced their use of it, I'd find him credible. ("You can use it as a weapon or you can use it as a tool." A tool? Reeeally? I'd love to hear him explain how his homies' use of the word is a tool.)
When a white person uses the word it is, may be, anyhow, a knife...straight to the gut.
But when his homies, who've embraced the slur to their disadvantage and that of their brethren, use it, it's a knife in the back (but those same homies might not be so quick to buy his products were he to call them out over it).
[rant] It's not "their word"! It's nobody's word, and it should be expunged from the language, but it can't be expunged, because his homies won't allow it to be expunged! [/rant]
