re: Paula Deen

What's most disgraceful about the situation is the way that her sponsors and business affiliates are making a scapegoat out of her to say to the world, "Look at us! We aren't racist because we fired someone who used the N word 30 years ago! Look at us!" Such an attitude harms race relations because it tries to make simple a very complicated and difficult issue. We have replaced a legitimate conversation about racism with "We can all feel good about ourselves if we make the bad person go away." There are people on television and in public positions who are incredibly racist, but as long as they don't actually use the "N" word, we don't seem to care.

Although I am not black, I am a member of a minority group, and if I instantly wrote every single person I overheard use a certain slur, I probably wouldn't have many friends left. The fact of the matter is that 9 out of 10 people who use slurs usually don't even mean or realize what they are saying. They say stupid words out of frustration, ignorance, or for no reason at all. In my experience it's rarely out of hatred or prejudice. I would ask the person to apologize, and if it's clear they didn't mean it, I forgave them and moved on.

Finally, you cannot view someone's use of the N word in the 1980's South through today's lens. While it is never acceptable to use this word, people are a product of their environment. The environment Paula Deen lived in back then was, at best, indifferent toward the use of that word.