I had an argument with my friend and I want some opinions on if I am potentially in the wrong, or am handling the situation too seriously. I am 20 female and black, she is 21 female and hispanic (will just call her E). We have been friends for 2+ years, and have not ever had any big arguments. Recently, our mutual friend, 19 female and white, accidentally referred to us as her "coloured" friends and we corrected her about the out of date nature of that term. Well that conversation got us onto the topic of people using language they aren't supposed to. Our mutual mentioned to me about a hispanic man at their shared workplace using the N word. Well E is a manager at said workplace, and this is a HUGE corporation, they have a whole ethics department meant to handle these kinds of situations. So, not thinking too much of it, I'm kind of like “ew you should report that”. Well, she kind of responded in a way that threw me. She said "why would I do that, it won't change his mind." I don't really know if I am overreacting, but that kind of shocked me? Because what? You would be reporting him because he is using discriminatory language in the workplace? Not to change his mind. I try to express this sentiment to her, and her next responses are her trying to explain to me how using the n-word is "unfortunately part of hispanic culture" and that her black coworker (who she is a manager of) "didn't care". Now, I am black, but I am also mixed with white. I have white family members and grew up in a predominantly white area. I have seen white people attempt to use this “my black friends don’t care” logic and get verbally torn to shreds. I am confident that if this situation had been flipped and our mutual friend would have been the one saying this, she would have been like no, that's wrong. I kind of just reiterate why it's wrong for him to be using this kind of language, and remind her that she is in fact a manager and upholding a non-racist work environment is something she should be doing. I remind her that the ethics reporting system they have set up at their workplace is anonymous and that when I did work there, I had used it for this same exact reason (different guy) and no one knew it was me who had made the report. There were some other things she said, but for lengths sake I am just going to stop here. I will say that I am pretty open to confronting people face to face, and I did immediately confront my friends on her words and try to explain to her how her words are coming across. To be clear, I am not upset with her because some guy is saying the n-word, I am upset because she is attempting to normalize and excuse discriminatory behavior.