These factors have led to a mind-set among Latinx people that they get a pass in using the word. Yet when defending themselves, they rarely address the bleak history of the word. In a recent Buzzfeed interview, the SoundCloud rapper Lil Pump pretended the controversy didn’t exist, and freely used the word throughout the conversation.

And during a recent appearance on the New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, the Puerto Rican and Cuban -American rapper Fat Joe equated Latinx people with African-Americans, adding that they “may even identify themselves with African and black culture more than black people.” The comment prompted debate online , in part because his own long history of casual N-word usage fundamentally overlooked how the slur is weaponized against blacks in ways it cannot be against nonblack Latinx people such as himself.

The same can be said for Ms. Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez, another Latinx performer, who faced similar backlash nearly 20 years ago for using the word in the remix to her 2001 song “I’m Real.”

Ms. Lopez, a Puerto Rican raised in the Bronx, had assumed that her background would shield her from objection. As a Puerto Rican raised in Chicago, Ms. Rodriguez assuredly assumed that singing along uncensored with one of her favorite hip-hop songs was a harmless act, one that millions of Americans do every week in their homes, out together with friends or en masse at rap concerts.

Perhaps within their inner circles and among their black friends they are able to use the word without consequence — the rapper Ja Rule, Ms. Lopez’s featured guest on “I’m Real,” defended her. (She also claimed in the midst of protests and opposition from major radio personalities over the single that it was he who wrote the lyric for her.) But as public figures whose language choices affect a greater number of people with different experiences and perspectives, it reflects poorly. And each star failed to understand the gravity of the word and its relationship to black pain, responding in tone-deaf, defensive non-apologies.

There is no justification for any white or white-presenting Latinx pe rson to continue dropping the N-word knowing how hurtful it still is to Afro-Latinx and black peers, among whom a wider and arguably more contentious debate over its use as colloquial reclamation remains.

Only the eradication of the N-word from the Latinx vocabulary can truly rectify things going forward. Latinx people suffer our share of prejudice and demonization, and we ought to take an empathetic position in our own circles to end our role in adding to the suffering of our neighbors.

Gary Suarez is a music critic and writer born, raised and based in Queens, NY.

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