It’s interesting that the word bothers black people (but if it does, I would never use it.) It comes from Negro, which literally comes from the root word which means “black,” and in the South, where the black slaves were working the plantations, the Southerners’ pronunciation of “Negro” came out to be what we euphemistacally call “the N word.” It came into pejorative and exploitive use, I guess, but it is a benign word in and of itself. Nevertheless, we learn even in the Torah that we should not use nicknames for people (especially when they may cause pain to that person). Why they think “black” is any better, I do not know.
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