I know it seems like a thousand years ago, but remember when Matt Lauer let Trump lie and lie at that “Commander in Chief” bullshit forum on the Intrepid?

The songs... aren’t for white people. Just because white people like them, doesn’t mean that Cardi B or Kendrick or Kanye or whoever the fuck was sitting in the studio thinking, “I really want to feel the passion Karlie Kloss feels when she says the n-word.”

I’m gonna sleep well tonight because I’m so tired.

I just taught my 7-year-old how to sing along with songs and not say what I like to call the “grown up words”: say “mm-mm” in place of the word or just don’t say anything, as if the word has been bleeped out. Or just don’t sing along at all — there’s nothing wrong with dancing instead.

Yes, you’re right— things ARE different, necessarily. Mainly a difference in scale. We haven’t seen a Hollywood purge like this before since the Red Menace, people actually losing jobs and hiding in disgrace. The corporate purge is different, too; celebrities are low-hanging fruit, but the heads of corporations going…

dude no. if you’re white just don’t say the fucking word. in any context. it’s not hard.

When I was 14, my favorite song had the phrase “what the hell” in it. I was a weird teen and inexplicably didn’t like saying swear words even as innocuous as “hell” (at least not until later in high school), but I would sing that song to myself a lot, and whenever I came to that line I’d sing, “what the heck.” I just…

I am not going to tell someone that their reclamation of a word previously (and still) used to demean them and treat them as less-than is unnecessary. I don’t know how they feel about it, I don’t know if they feel power using, I have no fucking clue and it’s none of my business. All I need to know is that it would…

Why are you limiting it to song? Why are you always so willfully obtuse?

Agree. I’m not sure why this is so hard? I listen to a lot of older rap and hippity hop (because, well, I’m old) and I just don’t say the word. Even alone in my car. And no, I’m not looking for a gold star here. It just makes me uncomfortable to say it. Period. Not just in front of other people.

I don’t know why it’s so hard for white people to understand that the word is not for them. This whole thread is mind-boggling.

See, I want to agree with that but, I know that’s not how it works.

You can sing a song. Don’t make this bigger than it is, which is what the OP is doing

So...black people should censor themselves in creating an artwork so white people don’t have to censor themselves while they sing along. Got it.

If you wanna call people the n word go ahead, just own it.

“I respect black people’s wish that other people don’t say this...”

Every group does this, but we are the ones who have to censor ourselves? Why?

Nope - Black people using the n-word is fine and non-Black people using it isn’t, end of story and clearly true by any moral, ethical, or historically informed standard. ‘TOP TEN’ song lyrics aren’t a magic excuse, and the thousands of white people that manage to sing lyrics to great songs while skipping the one word…

Strong disagree. I believe Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed this out recently. It is really really easy to not sing along to that word. Like super easy. While black people have to constantly police what they say at the risk of being seen as angry or hostile or whatever.

And just look at the white and otherwise non-Black people telling us how we should feel, and how intentions matter, and how if they can’t say it, nobody should say it. Look at ‘em all. Literally: