Whassup my nizzle?

Is it bad that when i read this, I had a Randall "Porch Monkey" reaction to the dropping of the term "octoroon"?

Wait, don't answer that.

My biggest issue with this article is the position that athletes could be used as a driving force for positive social change among adolescents, as much as and perhaps more so than hip hop artists.
Um... no.
I don't have the data at my fingertips, but I'm fairly confident that about 100 different reliable economic and sociologic studies have shown than African American youth are WAAAAAAAAY more likely to access (and thus be influenced by) hip hop than athletics.

So. While Ron Mexico telling everyone to stop using the N word might have some positive influence, it's still going to be acting in conflict with hip hop messages, and it's going to lose out, which could lead to Mexico losing his street cred to begin with.

I can't help but think that the "Don't use the N word, ever" argument smacks a bit of "Just say No!" We all know how well that worked out. Or abstinence education. A campaign like is proposed in this article ain't meeting the kids of America where they're at, and thus will not work. Now, Kanye getting up and doing a Colin Powell '08 concert where he drops a few "octoroons"? Wait... i'd better stop. This has turned horribly offensive, which is not at all my intent.

That said, Michael Richards is kind of a douche.