The N-Word in the Spotlight, Again

Dog the Bounty Hunter was recently recorded in a telephone conversation with his son using "the N-word" to refer to his son's girlfriend. Why are we still so offended by people saying hurtful things to one another?

You call one person the N-word, and the whole nation gets offended. Why? A majority of Americans have probably said hurtful things about other people, so why does everyone act like this one word is the worst possible thing you could say about anyone? We can rant and rave about people and call them pathetic; we can say they're worse than dirt; we can say they deserve to be shot or tortured or whatever we want, as long as we don't use that one little word.

People curse. It's not going to stop. If you choose not to use certain words, fine. But just because someone doesn't use "bad words" doesn't mean they don't say bad things. We're so quick to judge people who use racial and sexual slurs, but are we really any better than them? We as a nation just need to learn to stop being so offended. They're just words, and yes, they can hurt, but we shouldn't waste all of our time dwelling on the bad things people say. If someone dislikes you or says something negative to you, it doesn't matter how offended you get or how angry you get at that person, it's not going to change their opinion or the way they think.

Everyone thinks what they believe is right, and they will completely turn their back on a person if they say one thing they don't agree with. It doesn't take much to make enemies in America. I've seen the office I work in divided over political and religious views; I've seen people walk away and shun complete strangers because they said something they didn't agree with in a conversation; I've seen people argue for an hour over whether or not "Finding Nemo" has subliminal messages in it that can be hurtful to children (I'm not joking!). The reason people argue is to try to get the co-arguer to agree with them, and it's just not going to happen. They'll just end up hating one another, because they can't just agree to disagree.

We just need to get over ourselves! The biggest problem with our country is that we don't forgive and we don't accept. If we could just be more forgiving of one another and accept that we are going to say bad things sometimes and we are going to have different views from one another, we would all be a lot less angry and could focus on more important things, like how we can work towards a better future.