I once said in a senior staff meeting that we shouldn’t be niggardly with employee benefits. A disturbing quiet dropped over the room and I realized a half dozen white men and women were staring at me, while uncomfortably not making eye contact with our African American Business Development director.

The CEO rebuked me saying that was not the type of language I should be using. The Director of Business Development then spoke, he was a Stanford graduate who was always the nicest smartest guy in the room. He gently corrected the CEO, saying exactly what I understood, it was an Old English term meaning cheapness that had no connection (other than its sound) to the racial insult and he wasn’t offended at all.

Thank god for Johns erudite knowledge of historic English words and his omnipresent empathy but think it illustrates an important point. Intent should matter. Even if the word I used had a connection to a racial slur, I would have been unaware and in no way would intentionally use such a slur, not alone in a group of white men let alone in front of a valued colleague.

That word can never leave my mental database of descriptive terms and phrases, but I fight against its use even more so today, afraid it might unconsciously slip out.