Yes Diane Abbott said the N-word on TV this morning. If you're complaining, you've got your priorities wrong

After today’s Good Morning Britain aired, viewers have been criticising Diane Abbott for her use of the N-word, live on TV.

On Twitter, many have decided it’s their right to chastise the MP, berating her for using such “foul language” on air at 7.20am.

Abbott was describing the particular nature of the abuse she receives, specifying: “When we say abuse, it’s not people saying they disagree with you about nationalising the railways. It’s people calling you a ‘n***** b****’, threatening acid attacks; it’s rape, death threats.”

Anyone who chooses to be offended by a black woman’s own use of the N-word, rather than that fact that it is levelled at her on a daily basis as an abusive term, has surely got things the wrong way round.

But the offence caused by Abbott’s choice of words has a much more sinister root than a mere distaste for obscenities. Increasingly, it seems to be emerging that non-black people wish to gain control over who can and can’t use this word, the contexts where it is acceptable and what impact it has.

Rather than understanding that black people alone have the right to use the N-word or not as they choose, we see this continual sophistry being used to try and strip people of their right to describe their own oppression, or reclaim the language used to malign them.

This criticism of Abbott comes in the wake of the discussion around YouTube star PewDiePie’s use of the word whilst playing a video game. His excuse was that he said it in the “heat of the moment”. Not only is this an absolutely appalling explanation, it suggests that there are some circumstances or moods in which white people have a right to use this term.

People have been attempting to project this same framework onto Diane Abbott, but I find their argument that their cause for offence was the time in the morning at which she used the N-word both hard to swallow and, frankly, totally unbelievable.

As non-black people, we have absolutely no right to try and dictate the terms on which this word is used, and the pretence that these critical viewers would have been ‘all ears’ had Abbot started her discussion of racial abuse after the watershed, is laughable.

People weren’t really offended by Abbott’s “foul language” on a breakfast television show. Really, in the wake of the criticism levelled at PewDiePie, their offence lay elsewhere.

Non-black people (I say non-black rather than white because I include non-black people of colour like myself in this category) have become so used to their privilege that they cannot begin to comprehend that there is a word that they have no right to use, whilst black people can use it – or not – as they choose.

Attempts to censor Abbott come from this dangerous place, and an inbuilt resistance to allowing black people the right to reclaim the language which facilitates their oppression.

Amongst those who completely condemn Abbott will be those who legitimise her use of the N-word only in the context that she chose to use it (describing the abuse she experiences). Many will say that this is permitted – her use of the term as part of a quotation – but would take issue with the choice to use it organically or even casually in a conversation.

But this dictation of conditions from non-black people still insists on our control over a term to which we have no right. We must try and get our heads around the fact that black people will have different approaches towards the N-word, use it in different ways and consider it to hold different significance.

Any attempt to impress homogeny on its use amongst the black community is yet another ill-coded attempt to infringe upon their rights.

Anyone criticising Dianne Abbott for her interview this morning is guilty of this oppressive and ultimately racist behaviour. Let’s not be fooled when they attempt to present themselves as the injured party.