DES MOINES - 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.
I was in Des Moines with some bright leaders of a start-up Internet venture in Iowa. Based in Washington, D.C., these progressive entrepreneur-activists selected Iowa as one of the first states in which to launch an ambitious and well-funded Web-based operation - one that will employ about a dozen Iowans. Maybe more.
The two lead organizers - who are white and Ivy League-educated - were with me in a hotel van, shuttling materials from the Des Moines Airport area to downtown.
Our driver was African-American, which, obviously, is only worth mentioning in the context of this column.
Sitting behind the driver, I glanced out the windows and spotted a motorcyclist, zipping and darting through the streets as he traveled downtown.
The van driver (who is a motorcycle enthusiast himself) and I talked about the sheer stupidity of the absence of helmets on the two people astride the bike.
As our driver signaled to move from the right to left lane, preparing for an exit, we both looked for the motorcyclist and judged (I maintain quite properly) that he was far enough back for our van to slip into the exit lane.
The motorcyclist didn't view the routine maneuver the same way we did.
He thought our driver cut him off - and placed his non-helmeted head, and that of his female fellow traveler, in harm's way.
So the motorcyclist pulled around, got as close to the passenger side of the van as possible and yelled at our driver, "You (blanking) N-word."
He screamed a few other choice words, and I think fired off a few more N-bombs.
"I find it funny how people always seem to have to go there," our driver, a medical student earning some extra money, said, trying to play off the invective.
"I'm just really sorry you had to hear that," I told the driver.
"Thanks," he said. "The support really does mean something."
The motorcyclist followed us to our hotel in Des Moines and some other nastiness ensued, until finally, it ended, with the manager-on-duty holding my business card and believing my recounting of the chronology of this embarrassing episode for our state.
For a time after that, I talked with our driver, learned of his aspirations, his family's rich history in medicine.
Mainly, I wanted to wait with him in the event the racist motorcyclist came back.
Eventually, we went about our days.
But I felt sick. Not just over what he'd endured. But at the potential loss for our state.
Racism is everywhere, to be sure. And our driver, and my D.C. friends, were wise enough to note that it's far from fair to view this random thuggery as emblematic of the full Hawkeye State, and its mostly accepting white population.
My friends did start their business in Iowa. But I couldn't help but think that if this incident had occurred a few months earlier, when they were debating expansion, that it may somehow have factored in as a negative in their pro-con charting.
It reminded me of an incident two years ago when a close friend, a Hispanic woman and member of the Democratic National Committee, dealt with some ugliness at an Iowa State game. She was voting only days later on whether Democrats should keep Iowa as the first-in-the-nation presidential contest. How do you think she voted?
Words have consequences. And we all represent something bigger than ourselves, which is something we should realize more often.
There is nothing good about what happened that afternoon in Des Moines.
But there is a lesson.
We like to think we have advanced past the violent periods of race relations and entered an era of largely semantic battles, nuance and subtleties, a more academic pursuit, one decided by people playing by some version of the Marquess of Queensberry rules instead of by howling race warriors with visions of blood.
But as far as we've come in this state, and indeed this nation, on race, there's a reason Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate (who is not a former First Lady) in need of Secret Service protection.
Black Americans know a fear, feel a threat, we in the white community just don't face. There's nothing someone can call me that is remotely equivalent to the N-word.
As much as he tried to hide it, I saw that fear in our driver's eyes.
