Two summers ago, I was taking my now 99 year old grandmother back home from a fish fry at my parents' place. Most of her side of the family has lived in the middle of nowhere Cass county since she was a kid, and that's where I spent many a day growing up myself. But it had been a couple of years since I'd been there, so on the way she was giving me the run down on who lived in each house on the way up Highway 77 - "the Blacks live there now; that's a family of Vietnamese who bought the convenience store; the Blacks live there....and they live there, too". It took me a minute to figure out she wasn't talking about a large family with the last name of Black. She was talking about "the blacks". I guess that's progress for her, though....so she's come a long way since my younger days when she use to complain about the n_____ boy speeding down her road.
So I, too, grew up around n____ rigging, n____ toes, n____ knocking, etc. My uncle down the road from my grandmother still has a dog named N____ Chaser, though.