There was a lot of rap and hip-hop with lyrics that prominently and repeatedly used that word. I wondered then about what happens when non-Black fans sing along with such a song on radio or streaming or at a concert.

I did some research and it seems that a small minority of the artists think that people who sing along should sing all the words regardless of race, with most thinking non-Blacks should not sing that word. Some in the latter group also feel that it is a losing battle to try to stop it.

I think those that want to stop it can succeed--for now. If I ever feel the urge for example to sing along to some rap or hip-hop song I'll have no trouble remembering to skip the N-word part. I've long known that this is a word I should not be saying except under special circumstances where it is clear I should say it and that singing along is probably not special circumstances.

That works for me because I'm adult and when I learned the word as a kid I learned it as a derogatory term.

But now that the N-word is in popular music that plenty of non-Blacks listen to, there will be kids who grow up from the start with that in the music they listen to. It will be a word they naturally learn as part of normal language acquisition without learning the most negative connotations.

I bet it will be lot harder to get that generation to not use it when singing alone, or to not adopt it with the positive meanings that it sometime has when used in rap or hip-hop.

at a concert, he invited a white girl to rap the song on stage. of course she went full with it. he stopped the track after she rapped nigga a few times during the track l and began to.blame her on stage for it. of course the whole crowd went with it.

i mean. what a god damn motherfucker. seriously. i dont want to know what the girl was going through mentally. it must have been horror.

the obsession with the n word is crazy anyway. of course i dont use it in mh regular life..but when i quote a rap song, i quote it literally ofc.

Pretending not to understand this is being willfully ignorant at this point.

FYI I'm an immigrant from Africa with 3 daughters but I've instilled in them the values I was raised with, that everyone is deserving of respect, dignity and are precious in the eyes of God.

What is there to get?

“[born with] no preexisting moral guilt” — Is that some attempt to re-frame ignorance?

I have teenage kids and they sure as hell have been raised to understand, from a young age, that while they are in an unfairly advantaged group today, a few generations ago and they would have been rounded up, stripped of everything they worked hard for, and put in camps. And yet, even that fate was objectively better than other groups at the same time. What you call “moral guilt” I call empathy. Maybe this is simply what you mean by “virtue signaling”, but I want my kids to always look for those around them who are stumbling, unable to get back up, or who may just not have enough, and then to give help. But they won’t see them without empathy for those situations, and they won’t have that empathy without an understanding of the struggles.

edit: also want to make sure that "teen mental health" includes the 75% of kids that are not straight, non-disabled white boys. If those kids are included then this probably isn't a reasonable explanation.

Not a physical card in this situation, but there are stories that some kids in other schools actually give out physical cards.

I don't want to ban you because your substantive points are interesting and welcome, but this sort of internet attack is not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Ignoring that fact or obsessing over petty things like not having a pass to say the n-word doesn't help anyone or accomplish anything productive.

Surely, we don't have to write a five paragraph essay on the problem with perpetuating hate cycles among children in a thread about plummeting teen mental health.

Let it go. You got a million other places to open this debate.

Have you ever seen Mister Rogers, or grown up poor or in a bad neighborhood? Kids have to worry about adult problems all the time. They often don't have a choice in the matter.

Leaving them to learn about the adult world only when they become adults is cruel, and beyond the point at which they will have ceased to care unless they were taught to at an early age.

>Surely, we don't have to write a five paragraph essay on the problem with perpetuating hate cycles among children in a thread about plummeting teen mental health.

I never said anything about hate, nor does the linked article make any implication about "hate cycles," but it's telling that you immediately tried to make that link.

Why is his son singled out based on his skin color and unable to do things that his peers are officially sanctioned by the school? Not sure what that sounds ok to you? That seems like regular ole racism to me. That's a bit insane don't you think?

> officially sanctioned by the school

You interpret the anecdote as involving something official? I interpreted it as pertaining to social norms being enforced by only the students themselves. Kids hassling each other for "playing nonexistent white/straight/male cards" or "playing a card they don't have" is quite different from authority figures imposing equivalent policies. I mean, on some level the subject of the enforcement is in a similar position regardless of the nature of the enforcement, but we should at least agree on what we're dealing with here.