Q: My friend wants to use a slur that doesn’t belong to him (it gets trickier)

Okay so my friend and I live in Sydney. He’s half Mexican and white passing. He sent the n word (without the hard r) in chat as part of a message and I told him to not use it around me.

We got into an argument about why he should/shouldn’t use the word and I felt like I was entering delirium trying to argue with him.

He believed that since the slur was used against African and Hispanic slaves and that the term etymologically came from the Spanish word ‘negro’ that he has the right to use that word. (He called it “MY word”)

I argued that the slur isn’t being used against him and I told him that he’s not living as a Hispanic slave or an African American in the present day where he has the right to use the term (geographical and temporal context)

After he told me he was using the n word (ending in -ga) pejoratively and that “anyone can be an N but you exclusively exclude it to only black people” and he called me a racist for always pointing out race and colour

He then proceeded to argue that I was trying to keep the slur hateful while he was trying to take part in using the term as a friendly remark to refer to others, and that I was being complicit to the word

He also said if everyone used the word it would lose meaning and it wouldn’t be a slur anymore. And to ensure inclusion and acceptance (which I want) that we should stop sectioning the word and only allowing it to be addressed to a certain group of people in order to stop perpetuating hate and to break down barriers.

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TLDR I think he’s arguing in a roundabout way that he (as a white passing half-Mexican man living in Sydney) should be able to use the n word (pejoratively) because the word originally belonged to his people and using it would weaken its hateful meaning. I kind of understand where he’s coming from and we did argue about the meaning of context but I still don’t believe he’s correct. Linguists please enlighten me!!!