Down in the chigger latitudes when I was a kid, it used to pass for tolerance, now and then, to try to get away with a formula stating, in effect, that one's racism had nothing to do with race. It was not convincing when I was a kid, in the days before the Brown decision. Tell me one more explosive or poisonous. A friend and former colleague who is black, James Reynolds, is writing a book which explores that thesis. One may also consult generational differences.
Land sakes, the word was just sort of casual, conversational, descriptive.
Nothing ugly meant. It has often been noted that Harry Truman used the word, which was part of his native Missouri's culture, you might say. And Truman was the man who integrated the armed forces. I realize there is much silliness and hypocritical outrage surrounding the vocabularies of political correctness. That would have left a national television audience in a cloud of harmless mystification.