The N word

I personally am disturbed by the use of the N word, and am unable to see why a person would want to use it. Unfortunately there are those in the world who do use it, for reasons such as popularity in rap music, hatred and prejudice or ignorance. It was sad to hear that David Sylvester came across a store named the N word and when asking the white proprieters the responded with a line from a rap song. Now this could just be ignorance as to the true ugliness of the word, but I can't judge on that. With a word like this that never had any meaning but a hateful one should just not be used, but unfortunately how can you erase prejudice or put out the flames of hatred? Personally, I don't think the word will ever go away, especially if there are prejudices on both sides of the word.