This article’s findings fit within a growing corpus of legal scholarship that imports empirical, social, and cognitive psychological research about implicit racial bias into the law. This research employs a Critical Race Realist methodology toward the analysis, and systematically analyzes Black and White usage of the N-Word within popular culture in comedy, rap music, and spoken word entertainment, and reconciles these findings with research on implicit racial bias. The N-Word has long been a controversial word, symbolic of White racial animus and hostility towards Blacks. A contemporary examination of the word, however, suggests a varied and complex understanding of it. The distinction between a “regular” crime and a hate crime is the motivation of the perpetrator to select a victim based on their characteristics, such as race. Despite its key role in hate crimes, motivation can be difficult to prove. Part 2 of this article highlights a particular case in which a White person, who was allegedly immersed in Black culture, used the N-word during his assault of a Black man. Part 3 provides a general overview of U.S. hate crimes law and how racial epithets are traditionally viewed within this area of law. Part 4 provides a brief historical and contemporary analysis of the N-word and how it has been and is understood. Part 5 makes two arguments in support of why, when the N-word is uttered in the context of a non-Black person committing a crime against a Black person, the crime should be construed as a hate crime. Part 6 addresses why, despite Blacks’ high rate of implicit anti-Black bias and more frequent use of the N-word than Whites, the arguments put forth about interracial hate crimes do not apply intraracially among Blacks. Appendix