Currently, we are in the midst of a major and long overdue reckoning in this nation.

We are actively and boldly addressing many discriminatory social ills, all the while toppling many of the artifacts and long-held conventions that secured the continuation of such incursion.

Yet if we fail to deal with our own hypocrisy and misgivings, we will look more the fool rather than the liberated.

We, at least too many of us, continue to use with reckless abandon the original word birthed out of white superiority and perhaps the most vile of all words ever — the N-word.

In the next few weeks, the opposition will play you on this hypocrisy, and their criticism and ridicule will not be without merit.

Just think on it, people. We have successfully moved major corporations to do things such as remove even the revamped and re-imaged brand of Aunt Jemima because of its derogatory roots. Yet we can’t keep our schoolchildren from muttering the N-word as if it’s a mantra. Why is this the case?

In short, this behavior prevails because we refuse to educate to the contrary and we are deftly afraid to confront our own over its use.

PHIL GHEE

Tucson, Ariz.