Good post. I will try to limit my comments b/c I could write a treatise on this. First off I don't believe in censorship. So any writer or musician or filmmaker or whoever should feel free to use whatever profanity that they need to in order to get their point across.

There is a huge difference between someone who has characters that use profanity that is appropriate for that time or milieu and someone who actually quietly or proudly endorses such attitudes themselves. This is the difference between a writer like Robert E. Howard or HP Lovecraft on the one hand and someone like Stephen King on the other. I very much enjoy REH but some of his work is essentially unreadable for me and his private letters were even worse. (I need to write something about that one day.)

This difference can not be easily delineated but on the other hand every artist or consumer of art knows the difference.

I don't think anyone should use racial slurs of any kind. Of course no one is perfect. But that word is not one which was tolerated in my home and was one certain to start a fight out of it. Again, there's a difference between representation and reality. To the extent that anyone refers to themselves as a slur I think that's a mistake. I don't think certain words can be reclaimed. There are similar questions among women and homosexuals about words which have been used to insult and wound being used as words of proud self-identification.

Any white person that would use that word directed at me would not be a friend.

Now this gets tricky because inevitably there will be someone who is all agitated and so mad they could just spit that they are "not allowed" to use that word with black people. That's a ridiculous argument to me. First of all it's not true. If you like you are free to scream that word all you like at your black associates or friends. No one is stopping you. But you are not free to pre-determine their reaction. Chances are it won't be a good one.

A writer who I greatly respect and emulate has written a great post on this topic in relation to the Dr. Laura brouhaha a few months back. I recommend reading this. I don't agree with all of it but it hits some important issues.

To riff off one of his points this really does come to community propriety and consent. A man may get angry at his girlfriend or wife and call her a "dumb c***". A husband and wife may engage in public displays of affection including touching. In private moments they may use all sorts of demeaning or insulting language. (Rex Ryan)
Just because they do that with each other doesn't give anyone else the right to go play graba$$ with the wife or call her out of her name. I have worked with people of different ethnicities or races that had no problem calling each other names or making jokes about where/how they grew up. If I did that they would have a problem with it. It's just human nature.

I think that coarseness in language is usually a bad thing and should be avoided. That's just how I was raised. On average I think the widespread use of that word among the rappers is a bad thing. But I'm going to stop now before I start to sound too much like Stanley Crouch.