Sure, but did you grow up in a community with a healthy population of minorities? If so, then you probably don't really have the same experience as these kids.
When you don't actually know anyone a slur references, it's pretty easy to not take it seriously. A lot of my friends in school make "gay" jokes, until we made friends with a gay kid, at which point we stopped because we suddenly had a personal experience with it. That's how a lot of these types of things go.
Edit: not -> so (first paragraph made no sense)