Trayvon Martin's friend, Rachel Jeantel, has never heard of Rush Limbaugh but she knows a racist when she sees one.
In an interview with HuffPost Live on Wednesday, Jeantel said that it felt "racist" after Limbaugh used his Tuesday radio show to announce that he was now allowed to use the N-word because she had explained to CNN's Piers Morgan that "nigga" was meant as term of affection when spoken by African-American teens.
"So, ‘nigga’ with an ‘a’ on the end," Limbaugh said on Tuesday. "Well, I think I can now. Isn’t that the point? Cos it’s not racist. That’s the point. I could be talking about a male. A Chinese male, the guy at the laundromat. I could be talking about a man. That’s what she said it means.”
On Wednesday, HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill asked Jeantel if she knew who Limbaugh was.
"No, who's that?" she replied.
Hill explained that Limbaugh was a conservative radio host and then played the clip of Limbaugh's "nigga" rant.
"When you say out lout, in person, in front of people, that's disrespectful," she pointed out. "Nigg*r -- I'm not going to say it my kind of way -- it is racist for an adult. Why teenagers use it, I don't know."
"When you heard Rush Limbaugh say it just then, did it feel racist to you?" Hill wondered.
"Well, yes," Jeantel said. "I can't judge him. Why? Did I say it on television yesterday? Yes. I don't mean you're supposed to say it out loud. That's a cuss word. Cracker's a cuss word too."
(h/t: Media Matters)
