The N-word and punks

THE UNIVERSITY of Kentucky's near-perfect season crashed with a loss to the University of Wisconsin, followed by punk behavior by Kentucky players - plural.

Having their 38-game winning streak snapped was bad, but the Wildcats' reaction was worse.

At a post-game news conference, Kentucky guard Andrew Harrison, with his hand over his mouth (but sitting before a live microphone), muttered "F--- that n-----" directed at Wisconsin forward Frank Kaminsky.

Harrison is black, Kaminsky is white. Does it even make sense?

"It doesn't make sense, but it's this generation that just doesn't think," said Chad Dion Lassiter, president of Black Men at Penn. Although it reflects the "cultural atmosphere" Harrison is in, "We have to call him out the same way we would a white player," he said.

"If it were the other way around, we'd be talking about boycotting Wisconsin, calling the game off," Lassiter added.

Oh yes we would - street marches, banners, the works. But, really, did being called the N-word hurt Kaminsky emotionally? Unlikely. Using such words tells us more about the user than the target.

In an apology he tweeted (because no method is more personal), Harrison pecked out, "I want to apologize for my poor choice of words used in jest towards a player I respect and know."

Poor choice of words? That sounds like Paula Deen. Would better words have been honky, MFer or brigand?

Harrison respects Kaminsky? The F-word is respect?

Isn't trash talk reserved for the court? I can't gauge Harrison's sincerity, but the apology looks like a punk trying to escape a flagrant foul.

I used to think there was a double standard on the use of the N-word.

Is it now a triple standard?

If a white uses it on a black, it's racist and derogatory. True. If a black uses it on a black, it can either be affection or a call out. Right. Now we have a black using it on a white, and Harrison has few, if any, defenders.

"If it were Kaminsky who had said it about Andrew Harrison, it would have been taken in an entirely different context," said ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, no stranger to having his foot in his mouth. It would have been racist.

Even though many younger African-Americans use the N-word "consistently," Smith said, Harrison "uttered the word he should not have uttered."

The N-word is used by some black artists in hip-hop, sometimes prettied up as "niggah," to give it a different flavor. Any white artist doing that risks a career-ending catastrophe.

For his part, Kaminsky brushed off the remark and said, "Nothing needs to be made of it."

Almost lost amid the profanity and the slur was several Kentucky players skipping the handshake line at the end of the game.

That wasn't one player, that was several. That wasn't a stupid remark blurted over a hot mike. That was deliberate.

Really disappointing was Kentucky coach John Calipari, who, deciding against discipline, said "these are young kids" who "probably did some dumb things."

Probably, coach?

That was a pure punk move that I find more offensive than the idiotic use of the N-word.

You wonder what Kentucky and Calipari are teaching the student athletes about sportsmanship and losing with grace.

Not much it seems.

Until they all learn that, Kentucky will remain the home to some punks.

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

Columns: ph.ly/StuBykofsky