The whole Clarkson thing is yet another example of people taking 'casual offence'.

The video clip is years old, no-one knew anything about it and no-one cared about it until someone leaked it to the Mirror and they whipped up a fuss.

And yet living in London I can turn on any number of 'urban' radio stations and hear the N word used frequently.

I'm rather more bothered about James May ( seemingly a genuinely ordinary guy) driving on the roads using his mobile phone that could potentially kill people than some blurred incident involving an overweight mid 50s Yorkshireman known for his slightly outspoken ways.
That it involves a recording meant for the cutting room floor because he forgot/didn't forget that any connection to racism toward non white people in children's nursery rhymes or any other phrase & condemned as the most heinous of crimes is utterly ridiculous.

I was once shouted at the phrase "fu ck off white boy" in a threatening manner in front of a copper many years ago, I told the plod that that was a derogatory comment inciting racial hatred, he just ignored me. I was actually minding my own business at the time and got caught up in an incident but if I had shouted back "fu ck off" n@@@@r or c**n or some other throw back retort I would have been the one to be arrested..I just carried on going the direction I was going but it always stuck in my mind..

I've no idea how your average non white person looks at this incident, are they really that bothered by this, or is it mostly your stereotypical white persons getting their knickers in a twist so they feel they can take the moral high ground.
Clarkson has weight for sure in some of the things that he says (as a lifetime road cyclist his comments fan the flames more than most & that aspect i detest him for) but stuff like this..jesus H

You must be very young then.

Not really, I just didn't grow up in an era or a place where the n-word was used and it was never used in the context of a nursery rhyme.

Must admit your comment surprised me too but then again it demonstrates perfectly how far we have come in one generation - in my lifetime (and it ain't done by a long way yet) its become not only unacceptable but unthinkable for kids in a school playground to sing children songs and chants with racist references - songs that to OUR parents were harmless and just kids songs and nursery rhymes.

Its worth me repeating again, I attended school from 1961 to 1973 and then onto Technical College and the first black or asian kid that I met as a year group peer was at Tech when I was 18 and that was in Leeds which has always had its fair share of immigrants of all races.

I find the younger generation far more at ease with what some aspects of the multi-racial aspects of your society than either the ultra PC brigade or the ones at the other end of the spectrum who think Love thy Neighbour deserves a rerun.

As an example my son referred to one of the students in his Computer Science year at Uni as "Token". When I asked why that was his nickname it turns out it was because he was the only non-white person in the year. The token ethnic minority. There is nothing racist in this at all and "token" hasn't taken offence of gone running to the diversity officer or anything of the kind.

sorry, but that is racist, do they refer to female students as "tits"?

what it shows, is that we've failed to educate two generations on respect, and that's because irresponsible people have kids and are more concerned about being "friends" than "parents"

Quite, when we (and 1 teacher!) used to call the only Indian lad at our school "Choccy" we weren't being at all racist. He too, never seemed to take offence and never once ran off to the diversity officer. It was never meant insultingly, we were 12/13 years old, but it was racist.

Still, I'm sure your son and his mates are only being ironic or something and not in the slightest bit racist.

...but if Jeremy Clarkson said it the world would splutter their outrage. Again.

Taken from South Park so I'd suggest the students were being more humourous than racist!

Well yes, as they should.

What Clarkson did this time was try to disguise uttering an offensive word that is/was part of a rhyme, and the "left" need their pantomime villains to get all morally outraged about. He should have told them where to get off instead of the stupid bloody half d apology which made him look idiotic.

Cool, I'm now free to wander around calling black people "chalky".

Eh?

Quite simple really, if we're going to decide that simply being on TV doesn't make something racist, then I'm going to use Jim Davidson as my reference when I use humorous names for referencing black people, I'll probably do it in that oh so funny accent that he used to effect.

..then we're gonna have a straw man of paracetamolic proportions.

Ah I had totally forgot Davisons character, I was thinking about Love Thy Neighbour

How could you forget something so hilarious?

I think BG was quoting from the Scriptures, not referencing a bad old sitcom.

Whisky.

I've seen the phrase 'N-word' used in American media over the years and recently over here (although I've only took notice with this Jeremy Clarkson story). Is arranging six letters in a certain way to form a word really that terrible?

I think that it is awful to call somebody a (don't know if that will pass the filters) or use it in the way theat Clarkson did but is it really that bad that we would all be terribly shocked to see it written down or here it said aloud?