You might get lucky --- hell, you'll probably usually be lucky --- and no consequence will befall you for saying the n-word. But eventually your luck will run out.
That's what happened here!
Notice that Netflix makes it pretty clear that this chucklefuck had an opportunity to climb out of the hole he dug for himself. There was a black Netflix employee group. He apparently even addressed it, after the incident. And didn't mention what he'd said. He's not a recent arrival to this country; he's a well-to-do middle-aged white executive. What would it have cost him to mollify their concern? How much sympathy can you muster for him?
Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them.
I think "singing along" is not a sharp enough distinction - the Netflix guy, in a meeting about sensitive words, was presumably saying something like "The words that are awful and completely out of bounds and should never be used, like c-, f- or n-..." Such a use is firmly on the other side of a use-mention boundary in the way that singing along some lyrics is not. So it seems striking (at least to this non-American) that it should be considered heavily tabooed in this way.
In a discussion on reddit, someone said
"Within the last fifteen years, I've had readings in university English classes that contained said word and we're discussed and quoted in class with no one batting an eye. This was also the case in highschool before this. There's a big difference between referring to a Twain or Goines novel and using the word maliciously or with any intent beyond dispassionate quotations."
So are they wrong, or was there a huge shift in the social norm of using the word in the last 15 years (discuss in class vs being ostracized and fired, both for mentioning the word with full awareness of its awful context) or is the consensus not really quite a consensus yet, and asserting that it is, like in the Netflix CEO's letter or your comment, are (well-meant) attempts at driving it further along?
>Also, it's not like this is unique to black people and the N-word. LGBT people have similar words and we have reached similar detentes about them.
That sounds strange to me. Are you sure? Presumably you mean the word f-, but I think I see or hear the word being discussed and quoted in the context and with the awareness of its awfulness quite often without heavy, or any, social consequences.
It's as much up to me as anybody else. I won't be discounted because you think I don't have the right skin color to have a valid opinion.
> There is something resembling a consensus among black people
I doubt you have any reliable way of knowing whether your claim is true, but it wouldn't matter if it was. I simply don't respect your, or anyone else's, racist notions about what skin colors entitle the wearer to say certain words, any more than I would respect racist notions about who gets to use which drinking fountain.
I have no desire to say that word, but if I want to use it, I will, as is my right as a human, and if someone wants to persecute me because they think my skin color does not authorize me to that word, that is their own racist, neo tribalist, re-segregationist thing, and nothing I've done wrong.
Prob(racist | utters n-word) is high. You’re essentially saying to ignore this fact unless you happen to have extra info to further condition on extra context.
But I see no reason why anyone would. It’s just a matter of basic evidence, basic posterior probability.
