I'm a white female, I live in a southern city where the population is about evenly mixed between black and white. Despite that I rarely ever heard that word in conversation, only in music and on TV. I'm a pediatric nurse and I worked for 2 years on a unit doing weekend nights. The atmosphere was more casual than your typical hospital. There was a very liberal use of that word by several of the AA nurses. They even referred to some of the kids that way. It made me intensely uncomfortable. I thought long and hard about why it made me uncomfortable, other than the fact it was extremely unprofessional. I think it has to do with how incredibly taboo the word is in (most of) white society. It's hateful and most of us are taught from a young age how wrong it is to say. You learn that only the worse kind of people use that word. It wasn't common when I was growing up for AA's to use the word, at least not that I was aware of. I'll say fuck and can't and a slew of other disgusting words but I'll never say that word. It's ingrained in me that it is so wrong. Of course my cultural experience is different from others and I'm aware that for some people it's not nearly as charged of a word and that it's become increasingly common. It doesn't change the discomfort it causes. It also is something of a divisive word, in the sense that I can't really participate in that conversation. It's not my job to censure other people's language and I accept that it's their right to use whatever words they please but it does make me feel uncomfortable