Originally Posted by Zee

But I don't think it's been adequately disarmed. Within the black community, some black people now use it as a term more along the lines of comrade, friend, brother; but as it's not accepted widely (by virtue of it being exclusively okay for black people to use) the word is therefore still loaded and now it's not clear what it means and depends completely on context and perception. That girl got kicked out of Big Brother for saying the n word despite not using it in a hostile, offensive way which I think sums up the entire problem - it's not clear what the word really means anymore. It's all good and well saying white people shouldn't go near the word as it is, because they shouldn't, but it doesn't help to remove the problematic nature of the word itself.