[Commentary] Unfortunately, I've heard it used in jokes, put-downs and down-market bar-stool philosophizing. People have hurled it inaccurately at my Asian sister, and rappers use it ironically.

I speak, of course, of the ugliest term in the English language: the N-word.

The slur is freighted with our history, carrying with it centuries of subordination and cruelty and just about all that is bad with man.

It's one of those words that, once spit, can't be taken back. Using it is like having unprotected sex: after the N-word is in the equation there's no subtracting it.

Having been raised in a mixed-race home in which intolerance was considered something of an original sin, and having read and worked and opined on issues of race, I thought I "got it," for the most part.

I've always known my white skin is armor against the slings and arrows visited upon those with darker hues. Still, I thought, I could understand a little, feel their pain, if not totally, then in some sense.

But, several days ago, I learned again what the N-word really meant, the power it holds, the fear it inspires, the ugliness it ushers into an evening, a lifetime even.

Click here to read the rest of Iowa Independent fellow Douglas Burns' column in the Carroll Daily Times Herald.