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Comment by lupire | Hacker News Reader

I hope that this ruling applies to UT Knoxville too.

They kicked out a student and cheerleader based on false accusation of her using "a derogatory racist slur" in a leaked private conversation. (She said "nigga".)

https://www.wvlt.tv/content/news/Incoming-UT-cheerleader-use...

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Sorry, it's a derogatory racist slur. Not sure what makes you think otherwise.

Well, some people say it daily to their friends so it probably depends on the person and the context.

It definitely depends on the context, along with thousands of other words in the dictionary.

So we should probably update and clarify that this is a word that can be used as a derogatory racist slur but it can also be used otherwise.

Who needs to update or clarify what? Even English dictionaries explain this.

Well cool_dude85 claims it is a racist slur, when the reality is that it can be a racist slur, which I would argue (and you seem to agree) is not the same thing.

That claim was a child comment to a specific usage of the word, which contained the context necessary for that commenter to come to that conclusion.

The context being the video in that linked article? Certainly wasn't enough context for me to make such a determination. I have no idea if she was using that word to talk about black people in general, her black friends, her white friends, herself, or something else entirely. Much less if it was being used in a derogatory manner.

That, objectively, is enough context to determine the usage given the usage notes for that word in both Websters and OSX built-in dictionaries.

I'm not sure I follow? Are you saying the context here is that she is white and that is therefore enough for it to automatically be derogatory racist usage? That sounds... racist.

That's a question that is sociological in nature, and far beyond the scope of the well-defined linguistic meaning of the word, which was what I was commenting on.

Yeah, I can't even really hear the whole word in the linked video, to be honest, but that sounds like a "hard r" to me... scrolls the thread yeah she definitely didn't say "nigga."

Quite a few hip hop artists would be amused by your hot take.

Either that or they are blatant racists that are openly tolerated for some reason?

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