I want to congratulate Tamia Booker for an excellent article about eliminating the word "nigga" from mainstream culture. The boundaries have been crossed now to the point we've got white people thinking it is ok to use the word, and when they do they are chastised and berated for doing so. Yet, not but a few steps away one of their black friends is utilizing it as a sign of friendship and endearment to their homies. It just makes no sense to me at all it causes confusion and makes me uncomfortable.

When I was young and growing up in a small Texas town outside of Tyler called Chandler, I had a friend named Ruby. She was a cute African-American girl with little pigtails and her and I were joined at the hip. She came over to my trailer all the time to play, as she usually did, and being only about 4 years old at the time it's really the only important thing I felt we had to do every day anyway. The evening before I had overheard my dad use the word "nigger" in describing a black man who had cut him off earlier in the day while driving to work. He used the term so loosely and freely in describing this man, and being only 4 years old I had no idea what the meaning of it was. My mom was ticked off to say the least; they fought for about 30 minutes over him using the word. All I could hear mom saying was "they are people, Tom, they are people too, don't use that word around our kids. Don't teach them that kind of hate." The day after when I was playing with Ruby and I said "nigger," not knowing what I was saying or why I was really saying it. I had just learned it the night before after all. My mother, who always seemed to have radar ears, overheard me and tore me a new booty right there in front of Ruby. Come to find out, at 4, Ruby didn't even know the word either. I guess my point is that when we are kids we don't look at the color of someone's skin as any kind of litmus test. We are innocent beings who, at that age, listen and learn from people around us. We just want to play and have fun we don't care about the color of ones' skin.

I later asked, "Momma, what does the word "nigger" mean?" She explained to me that it was a dirty word to describe someone in the black community. She told me if I ever used it again in her presence I'd get the beating of a lifetime, so I never used it, even till this day. I'm ashamed of it, but I'm thankful I had a mother who educated me on the horror behind what it really meant.

Tamia is right, by continuing to use "nigga" we are teaching new generations of African-American's that it is ok to use it, and even use it in a way that it is supposed to express endearment to someone else. This is a term that is forever synonymous with an awful chapter in American history. We must allow the word to go the way of history and let it die. You don't give the word power by changing the "er" to an "a." All you do is rehash uncomfortable chapters in American history that I am absolutely mortified about, as is most Americans. I feel ashamed every time I hear it, I feel scared, just as Tamia said, to even repeat the lyrics to some of my favorite rap songs that contain the word. I live in Texas I know all to well that it is still used by too many, but that doesn't make it ok. It's ignorant, plain and simple, it is just ignorant.

The bottom line is we have a whole generation of black, white, yellow, green, (pick your color of skin) Americans who are ignorant of some of the darkest stories in our countries past. They are ignorant of the struggles many minorities have battled to claim their equality in a nation that proudly boasts itself as the "land of the free." It's time to enlighten our generation to the facts in order to squash this culture trend. When you have white people wanting to use the term "nigga" because black America uses it as a sign of friendship that is when you know we've gone way too far. Read Tamia's article, it is brilliant.