By Leonard Greene

Riley Cooper #14 of the Philadelphia Eagles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A viral video of Philadelphia Eagles receiver Riley Cooper spewing the n-word at a country concert brought me back to the first time someone called me n—-r.

I was 7 or 8 years old, in rural West Virginia, where my big brother and I spent summers growing up in the early ’70s. We were running an errand in town for my grandmother, when some little white boys — and girls — started hurling the insult at us, along with some rocks that were heavy enough to break glass and leave bruises.

We did the only thing that made sense to a couple of boys from Brooklyn: We threw rocks back at them.

As for the insults, we couldn’t come up with anything as painful or poisonous. No one ever has.

We didn’t know what the word meant, and they probably didn’t either. But we knew it had something to do with hate and shame.

Anawalt, W.Va., near the Appalachian coal mines, was about as small as small towns get, so by the time we got home our grandmother had heard all about the little rock fight.

After we told her our side of the story, our biracial grandmother (who could pass for white, but never did) gave us a lesson about good and evil.

She also told us about right and wrong. Name-calling and rock-throwing were always wrong, no matter who did it, which was why the second lesson ended with a sore backside.

Still, as I recall, being called n—-r hurt more than the rocks or the switch Grandma made us get from the tree in front of the house.

Read More The N-word & me – NYPOST.com.