As always - if you’re saying a word is comparable to the n-word, and you are able to use your word in public as a non-black person, it’s not like the n-word

Frankly that’s something I do not understand. Why this single specific word? We have dozens of terrible offensive words. Why this specific one is considered so bad we cannot even talk about it directly, even when merely discussing it? I would think discussing it and not directing it at someone would be pretty reasonable. As with every single other word.

Is one of the other words associated with 200 years of chattel slavery?

Negro is pretty gosh darn close, but I guess it’s just not quite as derogatory.

To my non-American ears “negro” sounds far worse actually. Probably because of how rare it is in comparison.

It was used in place of black for a longer period, and wasn’t necessarily considered a slur in and of itself. But of course if you say it with a sneer, even “black” can be used as an insult.

For example a lot of books (even written by people of color) used “negro” and “coloured” etc. interchangeably up to the mid-late 20th century. But in modern context very few people use it in a manner that isn’t derogatory.

I still have trouble referring to a person as ‘black’. It feels like a slur, or at least an inappropriate racial caricature (they’re not really black!) and it still surprises me that it’s become the acceptable and inoffensive term.

The n word almost seemed more mild, being about the same thing (an inappropriate way to describe race from skin colour), but linguistically removed (I’m not a native Latin speaker*) so I can feel it’s just a word, no need to be intrinsically good or bad.

• Or Spanish, whatever

From my experience, black people want to be called black. I’m a white kid, but was raised in a foster family with three black siblings and other black family, including some that lived in a ghetto in another city. It was the 90s and early 2000s, so we watched some BET, we watched the Boondocks, we listened to thug rap, we watched shows with black characters such as All That and Cousin Skeeter. Because it was all a part of my brothers’ culture. In anything we participated in I’ve never heard a single African-American who didn’t call themselves “black” and be fine being called that.

I’ve also sometimes made the argument in defense of “black”, that “African-American” is mildly politically-incorrect itself— not that I have a problem with the term, just the hyper-vigilant enforcing of it . Because it’s not synonymous with skin color itself, it’s a statement about where they came from. We don’t call white people “European Americans”, and what do we call non-black African-Americans from, say, Egypt or South America? So… yeah.

That makes sense.

I’m not American; never been to America. So I grew up with different culture. The dark skinned ethnicities near me were mainly Pakistani, and I don’t remember if they were happy to be called black or not. I think we basically grew up feeling like you have to ignore skin colour, the same way you ignore the size of someone’s nose. We weren’t supposed to see it as any more different than someone else is from Wales, and someone else is very tall, and someone else lives in this or that neighborhood - but to comment on ‘black’ skin or big nose might give offence.

I agree ‘African-American’ is an awkward term also, as you say.

I suppose part of the difference is the black community in America, as I understand it, has a very strong cultural identity, whereas when I grew up the idea was basically that your ethnicity was another part of your background, but not your community identity. A British Indian is a Brit who happens to have Indian heritage, that they may like to hold close or may like to distance from: but we’re all British. And someone from South Kensington might talk all posh an’ all; and a Scouser’s gonna Scouse: but we’re all British. That sort of thing. (And if you’re not British we still welcome you just as fondly; and to do otherwise would also be racist.)