Opinion: Time For Latinos To Stop Saying The N-Word

There’s no one explanation on how we got to this point. Like everything related to Black and Brown identity, it’s a complex web.

Latino parents don’t want to be regular parents. We want to be cool parents.

A lot of us grew up listening to raunchy music at an early age. By that notion, we give our own kids a pass to listen to music with cuss words and adult themes. We tell ourselves “I was listening to 2 Live Crew in 6th grade. I turned out ok.” Then we turn up the volume on the way to drop our kids off at school.

That part is not what I’m here to discuss. Vibe out with your kids and listen to what you want. If you’re up early and taking your kids to school, you probably did turn out ok.

What we as Latino parents need to do is stop being lazy and take the final step when listening to music with our kids. If we’re with our kid vibing to a song and the singer/rapper suddenly uses the N-word, it’s our duty to hit pause, turn to our kids and share some variation of this important message:

“I know you like the music. So do I. But when we sing along, we can’t say the N-word. That word is off limits to us Latinos.”