Uncommon Commentary #456: UC #455 Follow-Up

In my last-previous u.c., there appears the word “Nigger”.  I do not use the word as a racial insult, but merely refer to its use as such; some readers may, however, object to the mere fact that the word is spelled out. (If so, I wouldn’t know; as you may already have noticed, I don’t allow comments on my postings, because I don’t want the crackpots and libelers out there to have even more opportunity to make their opinions known than they already do.  Anyway, this is the Doman Domain; if you’re not a crackpot or a libeler, get your own weblog!) The current practice of avoiding “Nigger” either verbally, by calling it “the n-word”, or in print, by writing “n_____”, as if it were an obscenity that ought never to even be mentioned, impresses me as being counterproductive as well as priggish.  After all, how do we dissuade children from repeating the “n-word”, which they will likely hear used as a slur at some time, if polite society has never told them what the “n-word” is?