Couple of quick thoughts.
1. If it is perfectly acceptable for person of one race to use a given word, but it is unacceptable for a person of a different race to use the very same word, is that not racism?
2. I can make any word you choose ("n**" or "African-American, "gay" or "F**," "honky" or "Caucasian") sound like an insult or a compliment.
(I'm Caucasian so I'm allowed to actually type the entire insulting word "honky" with impunity)
3. I have a little trouble with labeling someone who uses a racially unacceptable word as a "racist." Can we really equate someone who uses an unacceptable word with another who would chain a human being to the back of his pickup truck and drag him down a road to his death? Both may have a racial bias, but one goes far beyond the concept of bias.
4. While there has been progress (from the viewpoint of someone born in 1945, great progress), we are never going to solve our racial problems until we start talking and listening, REALLY listening, without judgment, to each other about how we feel. Can we put on the other fellas shoes and really try to understand how it feels to be him? I hope so.
5. Music, traditionally, by definition, must contain 3 things - rhythm, melody, and harmony.
"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."
By the traditional definition, rap is not music. The changing of the definition of music to include forms which are not music is already taking place as evidenced by some of the posts in this thread.
But, I hope those who embrace this change will understand and forgive those of us who are older, believe in the traditional definition of music, and are weary of the constant changing of the rules if we do not support what we consider the usurpation of fact.
And before you dismiss my words as "old guy" blah blah, let me remind you that rule changing is a relentless, ongoing social procedure. Before too long it will be YOUR rules that will be changing. And, while supporting some of these changes, like us, you will not be happy about many of them.
