Through the mouth of hip-hop star Shawn “Jay Z” Carter, the most infamous racial slur in American history has been elevated to an art form that has made him famous and extremely rich, with an estimated net worth of more than $500 million.

When Broncos star Terrance “Pot Roast” Knighton barked the same epithet to the New York Jets during the heat of trash talk in Sunday’s game in East Rutherford, N.J., NFL commissioner Roger Goodell responded by slapping him with a fine of $11,025 for unsportsmanlike conduct.

WATCH: Mark Kiszla explains Terrance Knighton’s use of racist language

“To me, the N-word is not as aggressive as people make it seem. It’s a culture thing. It’s just something that African-Americans use, and it’s not always in a derogatory way,” Knighton told me Thursday.

“When you have a Roger Goodell — someone who is white — enforcing that rule, he doesn’t quite understand the relationship I have with another African-American. He doesn’t understand that.”

The NFL is tone deaf. The same out-of-touch leadership that turned a blind eye to the ugliness of concussions and domestic violence also tries to erase the cultural rhythms that rule league stadiums, and Goodell looks like a cranky, old, get-off-my-yard man in the process.

Get this: During the Broncos’ 31-17 victory against the Jets, Denver linebacker Lamin Barrow was fined $8,268 for throwing a punch that resulted in his ejection from the game. Knighton received a heavier fine for uttering a racial slur? How is that possible? Action speaks louder than words, except in the politically correct world of the NFL.

Knighton admitted to using the racial slur after the Broncos scored a touchdown late in the second quarter. As a member of the point-after-touchdown unit, he jawed with four Jets to express his displeasure with the glee New York players took when Denver linebacker Von Miller was knocked woozy from a helmet-to-helmet hit minutes earlier in the opening half.

“I was rubbing it in a little bit after we scored, because (the Jets) were doing a lot of chatting, and when Von got hit on their sideline, they were cheering. That upset me. And when we scored, I let them hear about it. It wasn’t aggressive or insulting. It was just trash talk. And the ref threw the flag on me. I wish I didn’t say it. But, at the time, I meant what I said,” Knighton calmly explained, as we stood in front of his locker.

“Because of the history of the word … it’s looked at as a negative term. But where I’m from and how I grew up, we took it from something negative to something that’s not necessarily positive, but the word doesn’t have the history of slavery attached to it. It can mean my ‘homie’ or my ‘friend.’ It’s in that category.”

The NFL wants to give its massive television audience an all-access pass to the action on the field, with high-tech microphones capable of picking up the emotion that erupts from the mouths of players during raw moments of joy or anger.

“It’s damn near impossible to control the trash talk. It’s a war out there on the field,” Knighton said.

Yet Goodell and his corporate suits want to protect the NFL shield and sanitize the real nitty-gritty. The league rule book demands that players self-edit their outbursts, or pay the price when the language of the street gets too profane for the comfort of spectators sitting in front of the TV in suburbia.

Rule 12, Section 3 — whose purpose is to eradicate abusive, threatening or insulting language, as well as lewd gestures directed at players, officials or league reps during NFL games — is naiveté dipped in hypocrisy and sprinkled with absurdity.

“Whenever we get these glimpses behind the curtain, sometimes we find a little more than what we would like to see,” said Chad Brown, selected to the Pro Bowl three times while playing linebacker in the NFL from 1993-2007. “We ask: ‘Wow, do people really call each other racial slurs on the football field?’ Yes. In every single game I’ve ever been in.”

The most infamous racial slur in American history is forever repulsive to any child of the 1960s who stood up and cheered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech or sat down and cried when he was assassinated. But five decades later, after being turned into poetry by Jay Z, the epithet is issued with complex rules about who can use it and who cannot.

“A guy who works on Wall Street can’t walk by and say it to me. That would get under my skin,” said Knighton. He then turned to the locker stall off his left shoulder and declared it would be considered a term of endearment from Broncos defensive tackle Derek Wolfe, a white player who endured a tough childhood.

“Let’s put it on record that I would never actually say that word,” Wolfe said quickly, because he knows any word can get twisted faster than you can type a tweet in 2014. “I don’t want anybody having the mistaken impression that I’m racist. I grew up in the inner city, and I heard little kids say it. But, as a white male, I always believed I didn’t earn the right to say that word, because I didn’t live through years and years of oppression.”

Only the NFL would deem it fit to penalize the most infamous racial slur in U.S. history with a 15-yard penalty and a fine of $11,025. It aggrandizes a silly football game and trivializes civil-rights progress in one toss of a yellow hanky.

Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or twitter.com/markkiszla