Jesse Jackson's use of the N-word

"Poor Jesse Jackson," said Joe Gandelman on The Moderate Voice blog. First he was caught with his "verbal pants down" when he recently said over a hot Fox News Channel microphone that he wanted to castrate Barack Obama. Now, the full transcript of that conversation reveals that the civil rights leader also used the N-word, saying that Obama was "telling n... how to act."

It doesn't bother me that Jackson used the N-word, said Jimi Izrael on The Root's Hardline blog. What bothers me is Jackson's hypocrisy. He once campaigned against its use, and insisted that "you and I excise it from our vocabulary." But regardless, it’s time to get over the "colonial notion that all language has to be for all people" and accept that certain words are OK for one culture to use, but not another.

It’s easy to understand why Jackson used the N-word, said Deborah Douglas in the Chicago Sun-Times, but it probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Like many African-Americans, "I have reveled in the joys of the n-word"—sometimes it really drives a point home. But there's no denying that it can hurt people, so I'm cutting the word out of my vocabulary. "Mr. Jackson, you're welcome to join me.”

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