I personally find the "n" word offensive. In reading the excerpts from his book, I would love to know his opinion of LBJ's Great Society.
\
@libertybele I was born in 1933 in Texas, however my parents grew up in Arkansas. Black people were called the n word as that was their name. It was not considered bad, it was a name just as an Irish person, a French person, etc. That was the name my parents used as that was all they knew to call them. A black woman would come every Monday to help my mother wash clothes in the backyard where there was a big black pot with fire under it to heat the water. My mother treated the woman well but she was a n---- just as all blacks were called.
Story:
In about 1963, I was a public school teacher and I had an elderly black woman babysit my four year old son. Her family dropped her off in the morning, and I took her home after my work. She absolutely would not sit in the front of the car with me though I tried and tried to get her to do so. She would only sit in the backseat. I wondered about her upbringing as a black person. Figuring she was at least 60 years old, and I think older, but at 60, she was born in 1903. I just looked up years around 1903 in terms of black people, and yes, they were restricted to their race, not accepted as "equal" with white people.
I paid social security money for her when she worked for me, so she would have an income when she could not work. My son to this day remembers "Essie" fondly. He got in trouble with me when I got a call from Essie that she could not find my son. She said she would keep looking, then called that she found him. He had climbed up in the garage and sat there. When she went again into the garage, he said, "Look up here, Essie." He thought that was fun, but Essie and I did not.
