>[Darryl Jenifer]: People get on us about
> the homophobia thing if they hear us say "faggot." You
> have to wonder if they would do that same thing to a
> white band instead of focusing on the message of
> positivity that we're trying to bring.
I haven't been involved in the punk scene for almost 20 years, so maybe things have changed, but back in those days it was quite the opposite - Bad Brains were able to get away with saying stuff that we would never have dreamed of tolerating from any other band. Not just homophobic comments, but things like explicitly justifying violence against women (I distinctly remember an interview with a DC fanzine around 1985 in which one of their members explains how it's a man's responsibility to "administer justice" to a disobedient woman "in order to protect her from herself"). I don't know if people were hesitant to call them on it precisely because they were black, or if it was just that they had so much cachet for being Bad Brains. Maybe a bit of both.
If it bothers him, anyway, wouldn't the easiest thing be just to stop using words like "faggot"?