[Chronic Diarrhea]

I actually did agree with him on the statement that the word is seriously overhyped these days. I hear more whites using it as a mockery of its original use than I hear blacks using it.

The word itself originated because white rednecks were too stupid to pronounce "Ne-groes" properly so they just butchered the syllable and you have the word.

Despite popular belief, race relations are very lax around the SE USA, at least with the normal crowd. You still have a lot of splinter racist groups who hide in the shadows, but the guys around the univ. don't give a fuck about the "N word" at all. The black friends I have don't give a fuck about it, and it's common knowledge amongst blacks here that those who do use n*gga or n*gger are pretty much morons trying to look hard by sepereating themselves from normal culture to create their own sub-culture and society.

I played football in HS, and the black guys on the team didn't use the word. A few did, the wannabe-gangsters, but that's the only sub-group among African-Americans who use it these days from my experiences. Most guys just say, "sup man" just like the rest of us do. And that's a good thing: the less you divide yourself from other groups, the less susceptible you make yourself to racist or stereotypical thoughts. You're seeing a strong morph of friends and cultures between whites and blacks now in the southern states, making the word obsolete.