Thoughts for Thursday

Realistically it's Friday, but technically for me it's Thursday. I'm a night crawler what can I say? Anyways my thoughts for Thursday... Well I'm in Delaware at the beach with my family for the $th of July celebrations. I have to admit I'm mildly depressed because from my point of view the bond my relatives worked so hard to create is dissolving. Much like a friend who you were inseparable with until you got older and realized they weren't as special as you made them out to be. All my years growing up I was a sheltered and admittedly privileged kid, so when I "grew up"-I consider leaving home for chunks of the year 'growing up'- and prepare to depart for college [YAY!!] I am discovering the well kept secrets my family worked to hide from us 'children' to keep as many people as possible happy. Great fun huh?

Anyways no more tangents. Being in DE again reminded me of an incident that made me think. Basically my mother was jogging in the morning and was called the N word by some white guys passing in a car. When she told me this my initial reaction was 'HEADS WILL ROLL WHO WERE THOSE M-Fers?!?!? WHAT DID THE CAR LOOK LIKE?' After I had calmed down I was thinking about how the N word in the black community was supposed to have been buried and never to be used- or at least as infrequently as possible- among other black people. And I began thinking why should a word that is rarely spoken in a negative connotation within the community in which it is used be essentially banned? I understand the controversy because of the offense taken when people who are not of African descent use the word, but I see the use of the N word in the black community as a way of taking some thing the 'white man' tried to use to degrade us and making it 'acceptable' in our own community. I do agree the banning of the N word though, don't get me wrong. because I am tired of hearing rappers and sometimes R&B artists talking about their bitches hos and n*ggas making an impression on the world that most if not all black people are ignorant, but I question the banning as well because when I would use the word in the past, or if i were to say it now it would be referring to someone as one would say he, she, or it.

I guess my point is how effective can the banning of the word be if there are MANY people out there who still think of me as a black women a n*gger, or and asian as a ch*nk, or a latino as a sp*c etc.?