Popular YouTuber PewDiePie was caught using the N-word this month while livestreaming himself playing the game “PlayerUnknown’s Battlground.” “What a f–king N—-r. Oh my god, what the f–k?” he said to another player in anger. “I said the worst word I could possibly think of, and it just sort of slipped out,” PewDiePie said in a later apology.
This is a scenario we all know far too well. Celebrities and public figures constantly “slip up” and use careless racial slurs and then issue an insincere public apology.
A similar incident occurred a week earlier when popular YouTube beauty guru Kathleen Fuentes, known from her YouTube channel as KathleenLights, was recorded saying the N-word in a Snapchat video posted by fellow YouTuber Jaclyn Hill. She came out with a similar apology statement. “That isn’t who I am,” she said.
In June, comedian Bill Maher said the N-word while chatting with Nebraska Sen Ben Sasse on his show “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He apologized on a later episode of his show for any pain he caused.
“I did a bad thing,” he said.
Each of these incidents resulted in their own social media outcry. Users weighed their opinions on the matter from all sides. Arguably the most notable of these opinions were videos of people, mostly white, who assionately made excuses for their favorite celebrities. The central message of these videos was that everyone forgives them and still loves them. Some even went as far as to say anyone who is upset is completely overreacting.
The people in these videos do not have the right to offer up forgiveness on others’ behalf. When you have no personal stake in an issue, it is easy to gloss over them as unimportant. It is easy to forgive someone who did not do anything to you.
If a black person wants to forgive someone for saying the N-word, that is their choice.
However, it is their choice and their choice alone to make. Other people need to stop telling them what to do and how to feel. This does not just apply to the n-word but to all racial slurs in general. The only people who get to decide who can and cannot use racial slurs are the people whom they were historically and still are presently used against.
As a white person, it is disappointing and inexcusable when celebrities or public figures I admire choose to use racial slurs. I will look at them differently and oftentimes stop supporting their work entirely. Ultimately, however, I am not the person they hurt. I am not the person who has to hear someone I supported carelessly throw around words with centuries of negative connotation that attack my very being as a person. Therefore, I am not the person they should be apologizing to and not the person who should be accepting their apology.

Anna Coleman is a 19-year-old mass communication junior from Kennesaw, Georgia.