I don’t think that was Mark’s intention and knowing his tailgate crowd from over the years, I can promise you that what’s been inferred there absolutely isn’t accurate.
Sure, I believe you, and I'm not calling anyone a racist here.
But if you want to be a featured writer on a site, or simply a public person at all, how hard is it to not use dog whistles? That term has become a dog whistle, as it was used by...well, let's just say that the term "thug" to describe a young black man is the new N-word.
It's not hard to not use those words, or the F-word for gay men, or the K-word for Jewish people, or any of the other dog whistle terms thrown around because "it's my right to do it!" or any other stupid reasons.
Bottom line is simple: if you use it, you are shutting down discourse with lots of people, and as a featured writer on a site, that's just not the way to roll, and in this case, you are straying from the intent of your article, knowingly or unknowingly, because many people will hear that word and react negatively to it.
Changes in language matter. For example, publishers have asked fiction writers to use "enslaved person" instead of "slave." The reason is that it puts the person's identifier on the person instead of the oppressor - an enslaved person is the person being described, whereas the word slave becomes a piece of property to the "owner." This was asked for by representatives of the black community. Why does it hurt me or any other writer to defer to them when using terms that were so powerfully negative in our history towards them?
Look at the responses here. Mark, if you read this, please just stop using that word. First of all, you will NEVER get a job on a decent mag/paper/MSMsite with that kind of loaded language.