George,

Talk radio host Dr. Laura Schlesinger on Tuesday during the second hour of her show took a call from an African American woman seeking advice and during her tirade-rant-harangue response she used the N-word 10 times, two thirds as many of the 15 times Tea Partiers used the epithet aimed at black members of Congress on March 20, 2010 when they held a rally outside of the Capitol to protest the then-pending House Health Care vote.

The caller who called herself Jade requested help from Dr. Schlesinger with a personal problem. She said, "I am black, my husband is white. We have some friends and family members who start making racist comments as if I'm not there or if I'm not black. And my husband ignores these statements, and it hurts my feelings."

Schlesinger accused the woman of being hypersensitive to racism and having a "chip on her shoulder." The caller objected to the comments and asked about using the N-word. She replied, "Oh, then I guess you don't watch HBO. Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you here is N..., N..., N... ." When black people say it, it's affectionate. The caller seeking clarity then asked, "Is it ok to say the N-word?" The response, "It depends how it's said, black guys talking to each other seem to think it's ok." Then she scolded her caller, telling her not to "double NAACP me."

Schlesinger's advice, more correctly, vice, to the caller, "If you're hypersensitive about color don't marry out of your race." To justify "black on black, as opposed to black on white or visa vesa, she added, "A lot of blacks voted for Obama simply because he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing." It didn't occur to her that they could have voted for him because he was half-white. Of course, the truth is blacks, like many non-blacks, voted for him because he was the best suited candidate to be president. Americans know that Obama is black and most important, he knows that he is black.When did having black blood make you half-black Never forget that many slaves had white fathers and some white mothers.

As a black man who had to fight to become a registered voter in my native state of Alabama after I retuned from a four-year tour of duty during the Korean War, like other blacks, I have voted time and time again for white candidates. I can testify that blacks do not vote for a person because he is black or stay home if there is no black candidate on the ballot. Also like other blacks I vote for the person who I believe will best represent me. Admittedly, at times that has been the "lesser of two or more evils." Recently, in Alabama blacks voted for a white candidate for governor rather than the black candidate.

"Don't marry outside of your race," the advice Schlesinger gave Jade, is a relic of the past in America. Who is Schlesinger to tell a person not to marry outside of his or her race or not to marry a person of his or her own gender, for that matter, as she did previously to this racist incident.

Schlesinger need to know that black comedians who use the N-word do not set the standard for black people and that blacks who respect themselves do not use this word. I do not recall having heard a single black person use the N-word during the last several years. That word embodies the most horrible and cruel things that can be done to a human being that blacks' foreparents experienced and this is their legacy today. To Schlesinger I say, rather than speak of how some black comedians (not Bill Cosby) use the N-word it may be wisdom for you to say what black politicians, including President Obama whom you call half-black, are saying about themselves and the absence of the N-word in their vocabulary. Using the N-word is never an option. It's like saying to the Jewish peope there was never a holocaust.

Although on the day following her racist triade, Schlesinger apologized for saying the N-word, like myself most black people accept her apology, but demand that she, believed by many blacks to be a proven self-righteous, right-wing, hateful bigot, make atonement for having repeatedly used on the air the N-word and racially-charged out-of-the mainstream statements about race that are reprehensible, not only to black Americans but to non-black Americans.

Uriah J. Fields (Electronic mail, August 13, 2010)