Black & White- "Cracker" Comic Chris Rock and Michael Richards
The blogs are filled with heated debate over the word used the other night by Richards who belted out the word forever caught on tape for the world to hear. I am not making excuses for Richards remarks as I believe they were wrong to have been shouted out in the first place. Recently, I attended a Chris Rock show and two thirds into the show we got up and left. I didn't like the fact that most of his jokes were very "racist" refering to white people as "Crackers" and other hard hitting words and phrases associated to his view of "White America". 
We were in the minority and others that were in the audience continued to look at us for our reactions to Chris Rocks remarks. Then tonight I heard that Richards reached out to the Rev. Jessy Jackson for advice on how to handle the situation. I would also like to send exerpts of Chris Rock show and send them to Rev. Jackson and ask his wise advise to see how he responds. The underlying fact is that if it had not been recorded we never, as a nation would even be talking about it.
The term nigger was used in lumber mills until the mid-point of the 20th century. It refers to a device that turns a log while it is being stripped of its bark. This may be an off-hand reference to the prejudicial use of the word, as until the machine was invented, this was considered a job too dangerous for anyone other than a Black man.
en.wikipedia.org
That doesn't mean you or anyone isn't free to hear it in another tone or connotation, but history doesn't allow us that option. There are no white, pink, yellow, or turquoise "n"'s, just like purple isn't green, nor pink blue. One Blogger said it best-
