I’ve been around long enough to remember when that word was used by everyone, both black and white, and had no meaning other than to mean you were referring to a black person, but one day it became a word only black people could use and white people were forbidden to use it.
Did the meaning of the word suddenly change? If so, what does it now mean if it no longer can be used simply in reference to a black person? If the word now means something so terrible that white people are forbidden to use it in any connotation, why is it black people are free to use the word any time they please? What is so terrible about that word that black people have avoided being charged with murder simply because they claimed their white victim had called them that forbidden word?
Does this word now have a meaning it didn’t have in the past, or has it simply become a “control” issue where blacks can tell whites what they can say and what they can’t say?