Where did it all begin?
Well, the tweet basically made the point that the N-word is basically the straight version of Queer, a word which has been used for decades as a derogatory term and how queer hasn't been reclaimed, it isn't a sexuality.
I still very much stand by this point.
However, a white person using the N-word stirred up a lot of hatred. Several users saw about it being the 1 year since passing of my Nana, and hoped that she was "resting in piss" or "burning in hell". I got told I should be murdered, burned alive, beaten, made disabled and much, much more.
Although hundreds of people got in touch with me over the tweet, thousands of people saw the tweet and didn't bother getting in touch - more than likely because they don't care.
A large chunk of people told me I was a white supremacist and racist for even typing the word, then went on to say I shouldn't use it.
A white person shouldn't use the word.
Let's swap that sentence for a second here...
A black person shouldn't use the word.
Many of you reading that would assume the 2nd one is racist there, but actually, BOTH sentences are racist. It is telling people, based on the colour of their skin, that they cannot use a certain word. However, many people refused to see the racism in the first sentence, some even going as far as saying "it isn't possible to be racist to a white person".
What else did I face? Let's see...
3 of my friends were contacted through Facebook with messages like this...
Now unfortunately for her, my friends (a lot of them, not all) are supportive of me and some even agree with what I said.
I had an email to my company email address off someone trying to get me sacked, however, it being a self employed deal meant it was quite dumb of the gentleman to email, because the email just got deleted.
So you can see, people really tried to ruin me, over a word which in truth, caused them no offense or problems. I did report many of the tweets I received (around 200 reports were made) and around 50 accounts had to remove their tweets and faced time out on the platform where they cannot tweet or do anything for a set amount of time.
I think my block list almost doubled in size too, because I am not wanting contact from idiots again in the future.
Anyway, the whole point of this was to explain my side of the story in a way that people can actually read. It isn't racist for a white person to use the N-word. It isn't denying the history of the black community, it isn't being said in a disrespectful manor and certainly isn't causing offense to the majority of people these days.
Oh, the best thing was a tweet that said "he's lost friends because of this", and let me explain why that is funny. So we all know of people who will try to start an argument with you because you hold a different opinion than them, well a friend of mine from years ago called Jakey turned into one of those people. Over the past few months he had tried to argue with me over pretty much everything he could, so of course he was determined that he would fall out with me over this tweet. He tweeted that he was ashamed he had called me a friend for so long, which is where the losing friends tweet came from. Was he a friend? In the past year or so, no, he wasn't. Have I lost any sleep because he's decided to not have contact with me? No. I also think it's him that leaked my Facebook and friends details, which isn't really surprising if true.
The original tweet has been seen around 49,000 times at the time of posting this, it gathered less than 500 responses. I'd say the figures speak for themselves, the majority of people just aren't bothered.
And they shouldn't be, because equality is what we strive for.
