Former CNN personality and current editor for the Daily Mail UK, Piers Morgan, decided to offer his perspective on race and racism via an op-ed piece that was published yesterday. In the piece, Morgan suggested that black Americans’ use of the “N-word” exacerbates the race issue and decried the term — while using violent imagery that evoked slavery.
“It’s such an inflammatory and offensive word that for any high-profile white person to publicly use it, without abbreviating to ‘N-word’, is rightly tantamount to professional suicide and personal opprobrium,” Morgan writes. “I don’t use it; would never use it. But it has become astonishingly ubiquitous in modern American society.”
“Better, surely, to have [the N-word] expunged completely,” says Morgan. “Eradicated, obliterated, tied to a literary post and whipped into such brutal submission that it never rears its vicious head again.
“As a white man, I have no right to demand that any black person gives up using the N-word. But as someone who believes passionately in civil rights, I just think it’s the right thing to do.”
Morgan’s commentary was swiftly condemned by black Twitter users, and R&B star John Legend offered some sarcastically pointed words of “praise” to Morgan for his piece.
Upon seeing John Legend’s tweets, Morgan was quick to defend his position. He and Legend then engaged in a brief back-and-forth.
