I am not fond of either of them especially Elisabeth (she is a crotch) and I don't agree with either, but I do understand where they are both coming from.
I am black, proud of it, I went to a predominately white middle and high school after going to an all black elementary school. Being shy anyway, middle school was such a culture shock for me. All of the other black kids at my school kinda stuck together, I had white friends, but i felt like I knew who my real friends were and till this day I still keep in contact with a few of my black friends, and not any of my white friends.
I think the fact that we could relate to one another, getting up early and getting on a bus to be shipped off to the suburbs for school, having to explain to your friends on the block why you get home so late and why you talk differently sometimes. It was an opportunity of a lifetime to be socialized with kids that you wouldn't normally know and mostly a chance at a better education than the Boston Public schools could offer.
Within that group of friend we spoke to each other is a certain way, nigga (not nigger, don't get it twisted, there is a difference) was a word, that was just that, a word. We used it all the time with each other, we heard it in our music, for me it was a word that I didn't hear very often at home, but for a lot of us it was. It had a negative connotation for anyone using it that wasn't black, it was a double standard simply put. And that is the way that it is and how it has always been. There is a phrase that we used to use out in suburbia when our white friends couldn't relate to what were were talking about, we would say, Its a black thing, you wouldn't understand. And its the same way with the n-word.
As a child I never personally experienced the ugly side of the n-word, but my mother who grew up poor in North Carolina and my father who grew up poor in Boston and ran with the black panther out in LA in his 20's so I knew how ugly the n-word could be, and I never said it at home.
My mother tells me stories about how her parents were afraid to vote when they finally got the chance to and how as a child she didn't understand why they wanted to vote anyway because it didn't change anything. How she couldn't use the same water fountain and bathroom as white people, but that was just the way things were then, so it didn't seem wrong. And although it was way past those times, she picked cotton for extra money.
As an adult I have only been called the n-word to my face once by a crazy road raging lady in traffic in North Carolina. And all I did was laugh, not because it was funny, but because she was so ignorant that she couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say, bitch, asshole or douchebag would have been so much more fitting.
I am now married to a white man and without those experiences in the suburbs I don't think that I would have been open minded enough to pursue a relationship with someone outside my race. He and i have had discussions about the n-word, he has enough black friends to know that its not cool that he says it and he never has said it around me. Even though we are married and I know him better than anyone else, I still don't think that I would be comfortable with him saying the n-word and that's knowing that it wouldn't be coming from an ugly place from him, its just because he is white. If that makes me a hypocrite than so be it.
On the rare occasion that I do say it now a days, whether I singing along to Nas or Jay Z or I am talking to one of my friends it still very natural and very comfortable for me to say and I know that is because I am not using it in a negative way.
As for my ladies of The View, I agree with Sherri.
