Recently there was an incident barely worthy of comment involving a highly regarded country singer named Morgan Wallen. He drunkenly returned home with friends and in saying goodbye called one of them the N-word. Cue the cancellation. I wanted to work briefly through my thoughts on the topic.

First-principles: acknowledging that anybody can choose to be harmed by anything, can we identify somebody negatively impacted by the comment?
If there is an identifiable victim set, are we not punishing the symptom? What culture produced a group of friends willing to scream this word to each other? This gross punishment of a benign product of a larger culture does nothing. In light of our inability to criticise cultures which produce murderers, it is also hypocritical. Another hypocrisy is the taboo placed on asking the question, “why does my favourite genre of music feature the use of a ‘nigga’ every 10 seconds?”
There are two cultures here, one of a hysterical, Maoist, victimhood bent. Another wherein a casual use of a demonised word can be funny. I care more about instilling a social norm which laughs in the face of the former. The idea we need a social norm to tackle the latter is ridiculous if we care about a better, freer tomorrow.