Bustamante, it seems clear, is guilty of nothing but an especially ill-timed slip of the tongue. The colossal danger in lumping someone like him in with bigots is that it deepens racial resentments and heightens tensions. It forces many non-blacks to walk in mortal fear that if they say anything about blacks, no matter how trivial, they will be swiftly called on the carpet. All of this also leaves blacks open to the charge that they propagate double standards on race. Black rappers, comedians and writers have made a virtual fetish out of using the word nigger, to no angry outcry from other blacks.
Some black writers go through tortuous gyrations to justify using the word.
They claim that they are cleansing the word of its negative connotations so that racists can no longer use it to hurt blacks. When we say 'nigger' now it's very positive. Racial paranoia theories have been rampant since the urban riots of the 1960s. The conspiracy buffs claim that the ghettos were flooded with drugs, alcohol, gangs and guns, and that AIDS was deliberately imported during the 1980s. There is no evidence that any of this is true.