I refuse to be censored when relating the incident concerning three rednecks with tire irons who threatened my boyfriend and me for bike riding together while a mixed couple. This was in the '70s in Chicago. Fortunately, we'd just arrived at a friend's storefront. Fred knew they kept a baseball bat behind the front door for just such an occasion. He came back out with such a fury that the good ol' boys backed off laughing, like they'd just been playing. We all started yelling at them to fuck off, me likely the loudest. As he piled onto the bed of that jalopy of a truck one shouted back at me, 'Shut up, you whore, fucking with niggers . . . God!" Seriously, you think I would break that narrative to insert a mealy mouthed capital N? Did he euphemize what he was saying to me? If I had to hear it, so do you.

Then, some years later my adorable bi-racial eight-year old son, and I do mean adorable, approached me and asked me very sweetly, "Momma, are you my nigga?" It was obvious he was asking me if I was his sweetheart, for which there was only one possible reply, "Always."

THAT's how you kill a slur, you misuse it, overuse it, use it like an inanimate pronoun till it has lost all its power. Censoring it preserves and amplifies that power. I say, beat the motherfucker to death. Use it to describe your pencil. The family dog. The weather. Get creative, like my child. Let those little children lead us. Always.

Oh, and wait till I tell you what the word 'Caucasian' originally signified -- high priced prostitutes. I kid you not. Ask Nell Painter. See, that's what you do. You flip the word. You don't censor it. You flip it.

Next thing you know, it's a hundred years later and people are mystified why anyone was ever offended at being called a sweetheart, sweetheart.