“I just can’t imagine how one human being can do something like that to another,” he said. 
  We’d just heard that the second of three white men charged with dragging a black man to pieces behind a truck had been convicted. 
  His statement startled me. 
  He’s my age and we fly together. I like him and consider him a friend, but I don’t see him except at work and don’t know him as well as I know close friends. 
  His statement startled me because he sometimes uses the word “nigger” in casual conversation. It was hard to reconcile his bewilderment with what I’d assumed his attitude to be. 
  I’ve always associated use of that word with bigotry, with negative feelings ranging from mild disdain to outright hatred. 
  Hearing the word jars me, regardless of context. That’s because of the way I was raised and the attitudes I was exposed to when I was young, but that does not make me one of those who would ban or rewrite Huckleberry Finn and other books written in times when the term was acceptable. 
  It occurred to me that one of the reasons one human being can brutalize another is that the rest of us do not discourage the attitudes that allow uncivilized minds to do such things and to think there is nothing wrong with doing them. 
  When people use terms that dehumanize other people, they loosen the reins on those who might be inclined to kill a person simply because of his race or religion. 
  It also occurred to me that people such as I who let others get away with using dehumanizing terms contribute at least as much as those who use the terms, and perhaps more. Perhaps more because there are, I hope, more of us. 
  I work with people from all over the country, from all kinds of social and cultural backgrounds. A few are unabashed racists, and, aside from that defect, are likable people. Their use of the word “nigger” is not benign, even though they use it in the same contexts that more casual users do. 
  Not long ago, I was chatting on a street in Sequim with a retired pilot I knew by name but had not met before. In talking about his airline career, he used the word “niggers” in speaking of affirmative action. 
  It angered me that he’d used the term casually and without shame in talking with me, assuming I would not find it offensive. But I’m forced to admit that my anger is not so much at him as at myself for letting it go unchallenged. 
  One reason I let it go is that I was caught off guard. By the time a response came to mind, the moment has passed. Another is fear of confrontation. Those may be reasons, but they are not acceptable excuses. 
  I’ve thought more than once of how a young, southern man I know only slightly may be jeopardizing his future. I know nothing anyone says will change his heart and mind, but I’ve considered asking him if he’s aware that his casual use of “nigger” might cost him a job or a promotion someday. I want to ask him what he’d do if he turned to see a black co-worker standing beside him as that term tumbled out of his mouth. But, I tell myself, the opportunity hasn’t presented itself. 
  Why should I wait passively for an opportunity to present itself? 
  I shouldn’t. 
  When someone I don’t even know insults me by assuming I’m as crass as he is, why should I let it go to avoid an unpleasant scene? 
  I shouldn’t. 
  And when someone asks how one human being can be so cruel as to chain another to a truck and drag him to death, I should talk with him and suggest that perhaps we all create an environment in which those who hate do not feel uncomfortable expressing their hatred. Some of us do that with what we say, the rest of us with what we don’t say.