f*cking pig in heat and if you get raped by a pack of n-words it will be your fault."

Laura Schlessinger, speaking to a *Diasporan woman who called her talk show, to complain about racial remarks made by the white friends of her white husband, in her presence. When asked for examples, the woman asked "How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around . . ." Schlessinger said, "black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n-word, n-word, n-word." And she didn't stop there, before she was done, she'd spewed the word n-word eleven times . . .

When Mel Gibson used the n-word, he spoke it privately, to a person who is not associated with the word's denigrating meaning, a person who was not likely to be hurt by it. Many people use the n-word in this way.

When Laura Schlessinger used the n-word, she spoke it publicly, to a person who is associated with the word's denigrating meaning, a person who reached out to her, a mental health professional, for support when she believed that she was being racially violated. Laura betrayed this woman's trust, by giving her more of the same. Racist behave like this because they don't identify with their victims. Cruel people behave like this, because they deflect their pain, by causing pain.

Fat women can congregate together and describe how fat they are and how disgusted they are at the sight of their bodies; but no thin person would enter the room to make the same comments.

Alcoholics can come together and describe what it means to be an alcoholic; but not one would enter that room as a teetotaler, presuming to tell alcoholics what a non-drinker thinks.

Wheelchair bound people can come together and talk a special language about their chairs, and the quality of life from their chairs; but a walking person would not presume to assume that knowledge and language.

Why then is it so hard for some people to understand that words of oppression, spoken by people who resemble the oppressor, should not be used toward, and around, the people who have been denigrated by that language for 400 years . . .

Racism provides a perfect canvass for the Schlessingers of the world to record their pain, since it insulates them from empathy for their victims, and it refines their insensitivity in meanness.

Laura Schlessinger is so alienated from her parents and sibling, that her mother was dead for two months before her body was found; and her father, according to her, is "petty, insensitive, mean, thoughtless, demeaning and downright unloving." Well at least she resembles her father.

*Diasporan: A descendant of a survivor of the African diaspora