Whoopi Goldberg apparently just learned yesterday that the N-word is considered offensive to some people. She’s also apparently an idiot.

This exchange on The View is stupid in many ways, but I found Whoopi Goldberg’s opening comment especially moronic.

In discussing Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain’s recent use of the N-word, she said:

When the candidate Herman Cain talked about it, how radically insensitive it was, he didn’t use the term N-word, which I guess is what we’re supposed to be saying now.  It’s so hard to know what to be saying now, so I just use the word.

Really, Whoopi?

You didn’t get the memo on the N-word? 

We’ve only been avoiding its use for the last fifty years.

Sure, I have an older friend who will occasionally use the word Oriental instead of Asian, but this is an honest mistake made by a woman born more than sixty years ago, and the word Oriental is still used today to describe items like carpets and teas, so it’s not as though the word has gone completely out of fashion. 

Not to mention Oriental is not nearly as racially charged. 

But the N-word? 

Seriously, Whoopi?

Is it really so hard to know what to be saying now? 

I understand that some people continue to use the N-word word, including African Americans who purposefully use the word as a means of stripping it of it’s power, but am I supposed to believe that Whoopi Goldberg is not aware of the history and nuance involved with the use of the N-word and its general avoidance in most of popular culture today?