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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

The N-word is something that African Americans have carried for generations, and when we use this word in our music and to one another, it is as a form of empowerment.

I’m Black and hate this excuse. I bet the average White kid hears the N-word more from rap music and Black people than White people.

Richard Pryor expressed it better than I ever could.

(Profanity, NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4ouYY-8zQ

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At some point it stops being empowering and is totally gratuitous. And when it's gratuitous and people still act like it's genuine - I think that's where it's mostly at.

Using it too much can normalize it. It may start as an empowering expression in black cultural expressions, but when that (hip hop, for example) gains ground and becomes mainstream, it ends up normalizing the word. It's better to just let the word die, I think.

Did you mean this video?

https://youtu.be/hULhZqhw9yU

Yep. I saw I had the wrong video after the edit window closed. I figured anyone who was interested would see it under related videos....

I agree with you. I don’t know of any other group for which there are epithets where said group embraces the epithet in order to “water it down”, “empower”, etc.

That’s different from the situations in some places where the word for a people in translation is an epithet but it’s the only word for those people, not that it’s embraced. (think “gaijin” thirty years ago, as an accessible example).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk

"Queer" is the word that springs to mind immediately because it seems like the project to reclaim it has had almost total success. Many other examples here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation

You could also add geek and nerd, but I don’t think those rise to the same gross denigration. If it were the other f word, I think you’d have a point.

Women have definitely reclaimed "bitch" to an extent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw Just for fun. If it's too long watch from 2:30.

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