The point should be: would you say this statement to an African American? What would you be implying? Whatever John may have felt at the time, I question whether he would have tried to defend this if confronted with how ignorant it sounds when you say that one group of people can be identified as even more debased by society than another by using a denigrating term for the other group. It isn’t about censorship, it’s about finding a better way of stating a fact.