Call it Howard Beach – Part II. Nicholas Minucci, now 20, was on trial earlier this summer for cracking the skull of Glenn Moore, an African-American, with a baseball bat. According to Frank Agostini, one of Minucci’s accomplices in the racially-motivated attack, the clang of the aluminum bat striking Moore’s head “sounded like Barry Bonds hit a home run.”

Moore, 23, is hardly a model citizen. But that does not justify the unprovoked brutal attack on him. Moore testified that he and two friends were looking to steal an automobile last June when they ventured into Howard Beach, the predominantly White neighborhood in Queens noted for another high-profile racial assault 20 years ago. But before they could find a car, a gang of young Whites, led by Minucci, spotted the three African-Americans. Moore’s friends ran, but he fell and was trapped by the group. He said Munucci called him the n-word and said, “We’ll show you not come and rob White boys.”

Moore said the 240-pound Minucci, called “Fat Nick,” made him take off his sneakers and drop to his knees before teeing off on him. Albert Gaudelli, Minucci’s attorney, claimed that Moore fractured his skull when he fell on his own.

The surprise star witness for the defense was Randall Kennedy, a Black Harvard University law professor and author of a book titled, “Nigger: The Strange Career of a troublesome Word.” Kennedy testified: “The word is a complex word. It has many meanings.”

Gaudelli would later boast, “I think I did good. I got a Rhodes scholar to testify for nothing and all I had to do is drive him to the airport.”

Outside the courtroom, Kennedy defended his action, saying, “I do not feel I was championing somebody’s cause. I was asked to speak as an expert witness about a particular issue. Somebody’s liberties are at stake here.”

Kennedy testified that the n-word has multiple meanings and is not necessarily associated with racism. And he wasn’t the only Black taking the stand for the defense Gary Jenkins, a hip-hop music producer, claimed the n-word has been stripped of its noxious odor.

“It’s been permutated and morphed by a generation of younger people who moved it around and changed it into a matter of parlance,” Jenkins said. “There has got to be more to it than a word to find that someone is racist.”

Buoyed by two African-American “experts,” Gaudelli said in his closing argument, “You don’t like that word. I don’t like that word, no one over 30 likes it but it’s a fact that people under 30 use the word differently. Ignore this word, it’s merely another descriptive word.”

Fortunately, the jury was not swayed by Gaudelli’s admonition or Randall Kennedy’s testimony. Nicholas Minucci was found guilty of second-degree assault as a hate crime for the baseball-bat attack and first- and second-degree robbery as a hate crime for stealing Moore’s sneakers and several other items. Minucci could face more than 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 15.

Although Minucci’s lawyer failed in his attempt to sanitize the n-word, the trial should serve as yet another reminder that we can’t use the n-word as a so-called term of endearment among ourselves and get upset when those outside the race use that same term in a different manner.

The n-word should not be used in any forum.

When I was editor of Emerge magazine, we helped lead a campaign that forced Merriam-Webster to change its published definition of the n-word. Cam Gilbert wrote a short article that noted that Kathryn Williams, curator at the Museum of African American History in Flint, Mich., was fond of saying, “Anyone can be a nigger. A nigger is any ignorant person.” When a boy asked her, “Am I a nigger because I am Black?” she replied no and urged him to look up the word in the dictionary. Neither liked the definition they found in Merriam-Webster’s 9th and 10th editions: “1. a black person. 2. …member of any dark-skinned race -- usu. taken to be offensive.”

Williams launched a national letter-writing campaign against the publisher of the dictionary. An Associated Press story noted, “Hundreds of people contacted Merriam-Webster after its definition of the racial slur was printed in the September [1997] issue of Emerge magazine.”

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said, “The NAACP finds it objectionable that Merriam-Webster would use black people as a definition for a racist term.” He threatened to lead a boycott of the company if the definition was not revised in the next edition.

Merriam-Webster quickly capitulated. Its revised definition of the n-word states, “it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English.”

That’s exactly what it is. And use of the n-word should never be defended by Harvard professors, hip-hop artists or anyone else.