I don’t exactly excuse Jeremy Clarkson for this, but I can understand.

You see, I grew up in the rural, (very, very) racist South. Most people don’t know this, but the common nursery rhyme that begins with "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" in the South at least when I was a kid (and I am certain still does in many areas) always used the word “nigger” instead of “tiger.”

The first thousand (10,000?) times I heard it in my young life, that’s the only version I heard. I didn’t even know there was a version that used “tiger” until I was 11 or 12.

That sort of training – especially for something linguistic like that – is really hard to overcome if you learn it early enough. Even if you try get every racist thought out of your head.

I never, ever say any version of that nursery rhyme anywhere because I might slip and use a word I don’t want to use, because I know how easy it is to do if you’ve heard a phrase used a certain way thousands of times.

Again, I am not excusing Clarkson. I think there should be some sort of consequences for doing something like that.

But I can still see how that could have happened to me easily enough.

When you grow up in a racist place, all that shit just doesn’t disappear by magic. You have to work at it.