In my high school years, I got along pretty well with blacks (as a strongly bi-cultural asiatic/white boy, the white kids tended to patronize and pick on me), but I resented the fact they could use N****r as a term of endearment for each other but I wasn't allowed to use it myself (I mean, hey, I liked them - the black captains always picked me first for PE basketball - I always passed to someone who could shoot). Actually, I didn't resent it then like I do now, back then, it completely bewildered me. For that matter, my godfather would never let anyone in his family refer to themselves as "African-Americans", only as blacks or Americans. He noted that their Costa-Rican relatives were black, but certainly not American (or planning on sailing back to Africa).

Hurt my family like hell when most of his relatives cold-shouldered them at his funeral.