I don't remember racism being that bad in the '90s or even the early 2000s.

[RecondoJoe]

I don't think it's because I had turned my back to key issues either.

I was raised in the South in an area that's probably more racist than a lot of other areas in the country, and I distinctly remember that there were two words in our house that would land you in serious water. One was taking the lord's name in vain, and the other was the N word.

And this seemed to be the norm all throughout my childhood and even into adulthood. If you were white, you weren't allowed to say the N word and if you did, you were a racist.

About 10 years ago I started noticing a lot of white kids tossing out the N-word like they were gangster or hood, and it kind of irked me, but I kind of assumed this was the new norm. That white kids were allowed to say the N word as long as there wasn't a "hard R" at the end.

Now flash-forward to 2021 and I see all of these young woke hipsters referring to my generation as the generation that tolerated racism, and it feels like it's the complete opposite. My generation never had debates over whether or not we could say the N word or when it was or wasn't acceptable for white people to say it. Racism was not cool or tolerated.

I really feel like these kids are completely out of touch with reality when it comes to history and that their generation was actually the one that tried to normalize racial and ethnic slurs.