John Ridley, Academy Award winning screenwriter for "12 Years A Slave"
this is from an interview he did at the Toronto Film Festival.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/12-years-a-slave-screenwriter-john-ridley-thinks-we-worry-to
(interviewer)
Any time pretty much anything addresses race directly, some real ugliness almost rises up to it. Are you prepared for that?
JR: As an individual, and I have to say as a person of color, the thing about being an other in America is I really feel like youre bilingual. Im from a small town in Wisconsin, but even when Im in New York and Im working for MSNBC or CNN, youre used to being the only black person in the room. You spend your life in this space where youre constantly seeing people who dont even know perhaps theyre being a little dismissive of people of color, let alone the ugliness that you hear on a daily basis. So at times when people say that [racism] is bubbling up, its just bubbling up to a level where theyre aware of it.
For me, when you look at where we are and what it takes now in 2013 to get those things to bubble up if the worst that will most likely happen is that some individual who refuses to put their name on [an internet] thread is going to say something nasty? I say, fine, if that is your true color. I will use the word: People freak out about the word nigger. I hear so many more horrible things said about people on a daily basis than that word, and if weve gotten to a point in America where were so sensitive about that word, then were nearing the end of our worries about that, you know what Im saying?