Should Schools teach about the "N" Word?

this is a story that appeared in a local paper. But I've heard similar stories. An english class is getting ready to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn and have a discussion about the N word. Or a socialogy class is learning the history of the word and it's imact in society.

These classes are met with some understanding and some outrage.

Some think that it should be discussed and debated. Why is okay for blacks to use the word more or less freely and whites can't utter it?

As explosive and degrading as the word has always been throught it's history
How did the word become an almost term of affection among some groups of black people?

Is it even possible for a white person to say the word to a black person also as an affection, without being labeled a racist?

Is that they way it should be? Or, should nobody say it ever under any circumstances?

These are conversations that can be hard to have with a group of adults. It can be hard even with a group of black people, to say nothing of a racially mixed audience

Is it beneficial or inappropiate to have them in high schools?

If these discussions happen should it always be referred to as "the N word" or can the actual word be spoken?

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Use of ‘N word’ in lesson draws ire
School officials investigating English class meant to introduce ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’



A lesson on racially charged language deeply offended Maya Jean-Baptiste, and it showed in the tears in her eyes as the Quince Orchard High School ninth-grader told the county school board on Tuesday about the embarrassment she felt as her English class discussed ‘‘the N word.”

The lesson, part of a unit on ‘‘Linking Literature to History,” was in preparation for reading the novel ‘‘To Kill A Mockingbird.” Like other classic works of American literature, the Pulitzer Prize-winning coming-of-age novel about race by Harper Lee, set in a small Alabama town during the Great Depression, uses the racial epithet in its dialogue.............


http://www.gazette.net/stories/111506/montcou190710_31957.shtml