Earlier this year, I saw Kendrick Lamar live in London – something I now view as less a gig and more a religious experience. At one point, Lamar performed on an illuminated podium that rose up from underground and emerged in the middle of the audience. There, he got all ten thousand of us to rap along to a song that features several uses of the N-word. Watching a majority-white audience bellow this word at America’s most prominent, and politically outspoken, hip-hop artist was jarring – not least because I’d expected people who had coughed up the extortionate ticket price would be aware enough of Lamar’s politics to know he might not appreciate it.

I was reminded of that moment again this week, after a news story broke of an incident during Lamar’s performance at the Hangout festival in Alabama. Lamar invited a white fan on stage to rap along with him. This she did, and – as she reeled off the lyrics of the song in question, M.A.A.D. City – she included the N-word, which crops up several times in the chorus. Eventually, Lamar stopped the music and told her to bleep out the word as she was rapping. She apologised, saying that she was “used to singing it as [Lamar] wrote it”.

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Inevitably, an entirely unnecessary debate ensued: whether it is acceptable for white people to use the N-word or not. Fellow white people, can we just not? Every time a white person uses the N-word in a public place, a long-suffering black public figure is forced to trudge wearily into the media to explain – yet again – why it is not OK.

I haven’t interviewed every last person of colour on the N-word and there may be differing opinions out there; but by now there is surely enough of a critical mass of articles, broadcasts, and talks from black commentators on the matter for any observer to safely conclude that white people, including the most dedicated rap fans, should always err on the side of caution and not use it.

There already exists a wealth of explanations as to why this is – from Chris Rock’s famous standup routine on the question to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ talk in November of last year, or a 2014 article by Rebecca Carroll published by this site, which opens with the lines: “Dear white people, and I really need you to listen here: you can’t use the N-word. Everyone knows you can’t – it’s not up for debate.” The information as to why so many find it offensive and harmful is out there for anyone who wants to find it.

Can black people really stop white people from using the n-word? | Rebecca Carroll Read more

The problem, therefore, is that we’re not listening. And by being deliberately obtuse over this issue, we are locking people of colour in a circular debate that we insist on repeating every few years, which allows us to avoid asking ourselves some of the harder questions about our own relationship to the N-word. Questions like: why do we feel so hard done by when we’re told we can’t use it anyway? What does it say about our ability to listen to our black friends, colleagues and neighbours when we continue to debate our right to use it? And why do so many of us find it hard to extend such basic courtesies to people of colour? The answers to these questions are uncomfortable because they may not chime with how we want to see ourselves.

But come on, white people, enough. Let’s be brave enough to have a deeper conversation.

• Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a freelance journalist