your average Joe isn’t going to search that out
Sure, and your average Joe isn't throwing around slurs by accident, or at least they're not doing it intentionally.
But intolerant groups will create new terms, or co-opt existing terms. Look at "black pill" (from "red pill" from The Matrix), the "ok" hand signal (co-opted by white nationalists), or "woke" (pretty old, but "anti-woke" became a rallying call for the right). It can and does happen, and that's not including all of the terms used behind the scenes that are likely going to come out to the public over the next 10 years or whatever.
The way I see it, there are a few types of people here:
- use it intentionally to hurt others for whatever reason - this group will come up with new terms
- people who use it on accident - this is your average joe, the quiet majority, who probably doesn't know what the term means/implies
- people who actively avoid it/are hurt by it
Taking offense to terms benefits group 1, normalizing them benefits group 3, and in either case, group 2 is left largely confused. IMO, that doesn't particularly help anyone, and the goal should instead be to get groups 2 and 3 to interact so it's clear that group 2 isn't intending to cause harm. That way it doesn't particularly matter what group 1 does, group 3 will hopefully be able to distinguish honest mistakes from actual intended harm (i.e. distinguish between someone in groups 1 and 2).
In the case of this article, it would help for those in group 3 to understand that these kids have likely never met a black person. It would also help for those in group 2 to actually meet black people and understand the struggles they go through so they can appreciate why these terms are so hurtful. Unfortunately, a lot of people online and in person seem to jump to the conclusion that a given slur was used intentionally as hate speech, and that's a failing IMO on both sides of that equation. Groups 2 and 3 both agree that group 1 sucks, yet groups 2 and 3 are frequently at odds with each other. That's not particularly helpful.