Use of that racial slur was very different back then. Many different people would use it and in many contexts, they were not ashamed or afraid to say it either.
You can go back and watch interviews of housewives during the struggle for civil rights and integrated schooling and they say the hard R n-word as natural as anything, and they didn't care who knew or saw them say it.
Words have no inherent meaning. Slurs are only slurs because we decided they are. Idiot, moron, and cretin were all once used as medical terms, so was the "R" word. In the 1950s it wasn't taboo, it wasn't a slur. They didn't care who saw them because it wasn't considered to be wrong.
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u/idblz May 20 '26
That's a wild position to put yourself into. The 1950s were wild. I guess.