I feel a little frustrated reading this, as though the essential point is being missed over and over. The difference between words and ideas is not the essential point.

Racism is not a homogenous idea. It encompasses many ideas; racism among Israeli bigots is qualitatively different from racism among rural southern whites. In the former it is a conviction of superiority, that Jews truly are the master race and the world is theirs to take, a piece at a time.

In the latter, among rural southern whites, it is the barely concealed recognition that they are deeply inferior people who can only feel any authenticity by repeating over and over that some people (colored people) are even lower than they are.

These are fundamentally different ideas.

I don't want the n-word suppressed; want it openly allowed so people who utter it can be removed from employment under guard, never to work again. I want them to identify themselves so they can be shunned and ostracized, their children rehomed.

Millennia ago humanity was composed of isolated tribes and outsiders were dangerous to them. Now we live in a pretense of civilization and we can no longer tolerate that. We have to learn not to hate people because they don't look like us or talk like us, it's not the same world it was when we were hunter-gatherers and the Other was the Enemy.

We've put up with this crap for far too long. When police can murder a 12 year old boy with a plastic toy and go unpunished then the time is come for extreme measures.

And no racism won't die with a word. There will be other words. New words. Racism may never die any more than rape and murder have died, but there would be a hell of a lot more of both without their consequences.

Racism is intolerable. It must bear similar consequences. Call your coworker the bug N and you lose your job and your family, never to have either again.