I never heard my 84-year-old mother or my late dad use the word and have never used it myself.

Even when I have used it in an academic way, it makes me physically uncomfortable. I really despise the word. It's a really visceral hate.

Maybe it's white liberal guilt; whatever. Fuck it. I HATE it.

Caveat: I heard my students (majority black) say it all the time. I didn't like it, but other than having some really good class discussions about it, I was OK with hearing it then. Like if my friends joking calls me a bitch/hooker/cunt, Idon't care. Someone uses those words AT me, though, and there wwill be some shit goin' down. I mean, I can and have been called those words when walking down the street from a car, but like when a person is RIGHT there in my face? Uh. No.

It's an official family story of when I was coming up the drive from school (Montessori) singing "Eeny meeny miney moe" and my mother holding her breath for the second line...

Turns out she didn't have to have that talk at that time.

It's a word we were exposed to a decent (applicable?) amount--we were fed lots of fiction and history with racists, so it was part of our vocabulary for discussing what we'd been exposed to. In that context, no language is explicitly banned--we just shouldn't use them as epithets.

Story of a woman diving into the deep end of internet dating (100 dates, 100 days): [link]

It's a word we were exposed to a decent (applicable?) amount--we were fed lots of fiction and history with racists, so it was part of our vocabulary for discussing what we'd been exposed to. In that context, no language is explicitly banned--we just shouldn't use them as epithets.

Yes, this. I have read a lot of both sides of the argument for its re-appropriation by Black academics and personalities, and I can see both sides. But I think it encapsulates a vicious amount of hate.

Someone said something random and sterotypical about Jews, knowing I nor anyone at the table were Jewish. My SS is. And I went the fuck OFF. And he was the husband of a good friend and we were in public. Oh, well. (The wife was superpissed at him too; he has a history of open mouth/insert foot.)

Fucking mosquitos. itchitchitch

I attacked the jungle of our backyard last Sunday and my legs look like tiny mean alligators ate me.

Little flying vampire bastages.

Fucking mosquitos

Agreed. I know it's summer by the number of bug bites. I have four beauts from the beach in Arcata, but I've been in jeans since then so scratching hasn't happened and they haven't gotten worse.

But I think it encapsulates a vicious amount of hate.

The history would with or without the words, as would the fiction, though. Insulating us from hate wasn't a concern of my parents--educating us about it was their goal.

WHY THE FUCK DID I DECIDE TO WATCH AMERICAN HORROR STORY???

Oh, I agree with your parents, totally, ita !

And AMS; do you hate it, or are you sucked in and creeped the fuck out?!

I grew up in the rural South -- in Tennessee, same as Paula Deen, I think. I never used that word. No one in my family used that word. I heard people around me say it when I was a kid, and I hated it, because even then I knew what it meant. I won't say the word now; it disgusts me. Paula Deen is only 16 years older than me, and 2 years older than my sister. Her age is no excuse, neither is the place where she grew up. She acts as if she thinks there's nothing wrong with it, and that's no excuse either; that's just as bad as saying it. There is no excuse.