I cannot give them that benefit of the doubt.

My old Gran, born into the Deep South in 1918, grew up calling African Americans that n-word with no malice intended – it was just the way people named them. She later switched to the "Coloreds" word when she understood the n-word "hurts Black people's hearts" as she described it to me. When she learned "Coloreds" was hurtful too, she opted to refer to them as they asked her to back then in the 1960s, which was as "Black" people. Why did she change? Because she listened when African American said those words hurt. I never knew her when she used those hurtful terms. She'd abandoned them before I was born.

If my old Gran learned better, so did those Arkansans. They knowingly CHOSE to cling to that hurtful descriptor. I give them no benefit of the doubt.