It was a busy Week in Pictures for July 24-30, 2021 dailyherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailyherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Context matters. It is unacceptable to use racial slurs as pejoratives. It is also unacceptable to construct a taboo that would forbid the printing or utterance of racial slurs even when, as is in this article, the context is the racial slur as a word itself, not as a pejorative.
Word taboos that disregard context are a first step on a slippery slope to the squelching of thoughts and opinions.
John M. O’Connor
To the Editor:
The Times is to be commended for running Prof. John McWhorter’s detailed and well-documented article about the history and use of the N-word because it sets that word meaningfully apart from odious terms referring to other groups because of their religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, birthplace, etc.