I suppose the idea behind this new idea — that the problem isn’t just using the N-word as an insult, but uttering it in any context, including quoting someone else — is that the old approach was insufficiently antiracist. But it is a strange kind of antiracism that requires all of us to make believe that Black people cannot understand the simple distinction between an epithet and a citation of one. Missing that distinction, or pretending to, is at best coarse. And we are being instructed to carry on as if this coarse approach is a kind of sophistication.

Plus, the assumption that Black people are necessarily as insulted by the mention as by the use implies a considerable fragility on our part. An implication that I reject and resent. If all someone has to do to ruin your day is say a word — even in the process of decrying it — your claim on being a strong person becomes shaky. I made the same point last week in a somewhat different context, and I realize that some are affronted by my calling their fortitude into question, but I am mystified by how comfortable so many of us are in giving white people this power over us.

But then I may be missing the point. Maybe it’s that if a white person just mentioning the N-word is adjudged as lexical violence, subject to pitiless prosecution in the court of public opinion, then we have a kind of power ourselves. The tables seem turned.