Do you think young African-Americans lucky enough to have never had the N word used as racial epithet against them ought to ignore other parts of the community that tell them this is a very painful term and they should not throw it around causally?

What right do you have to reclaim something that was never a source of harm for you to begin with? Doesn’t that make you just another set of bullies metaphorically shoving people into lockers?

No. Generational reclamation of words is fairly common. The best examples aren't actually race (comparing how "nerd" and the n-word are reclaimed doesn't really work, for reasons that should be obvious in that I'm censoring one).

On the other hand, within the LGBT community, tons of terms have been fully or partially reclaimed. Most notably "queer". That also isn't without controversy (and queer has been in the process of reclamation for longer than "nerd" has been an insult in its current context), but almost no one seems to think that by self-identifying as something (in good faith) you're bullying someone else.

Bad words belong to all of us. I use words that can hurt, and words that have been used to hurt me.

The N word is interesting because most white people are very hesitant to utter it. It's a rare, off-limits place that isn't accessible to every person of privilege who otherwise feels entitled to go where they please.