Sorry, can't buy that. Freedom of speech is just that. Most words and phrases by their overuse lose their original offensive meanings. Whatever happened to "sticks and stones my break my bones, but names will never hurt me?"
Your desire to control speech cannot lead anywhere good.
Nope, not what I’m saying at all.
I’m talking about the use of “n***er” as a direct racial epithet.
I’m not talking about making kids say the word as an exercise in literature, dialogue, or historical context.
For example, back during the OJ Simpson trial I got into an argument with a friend over Mark Furhman’s denial of use of the word. If you may recall, Furhman said that he only used the word in the context of helping develop dialogue for a book.
My friend said that was racist. I asked him whether he’d ever said the word. “No, of course not!”
To which I replied “You never had a teacher make you read passages from Huck Finn aloud?”
Crickets could be heard chirping.
There’s actually a movement afoot, there was a thread on it months ago, by Progressives to edit Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to change “N***er Jim” to “Slave Jim”, which is insane. It completely screws up both the historical context of the use AND upends how Twain used the word to show the dehumanization of the humanizing character in the book.
So, again, context is everything. In this case the context was a bunch of punks using the term as an epithet in a demeaning, hateful and racist manner. Which again is protected speech, but not something that should be tolerated or accepted.