Would you all like to hear something very cringey and terrible:

I grew up in the whitest bread corner of a city that was almost entirely white in a province that was as well. I did a couple of courses on African-American literature (love modernist fiction) at university, but the very first class I took was themed around African-American literature and passing as white (which had some real bangers). Anyway, the first book we read was The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Throughout all of the first essay, I called black people "Negroes" because that's what the book was using, (alongside the slur) and I thought it was the respectful term. The professor after he graded the essays talked to the class and said "I'm sure that there was no harm meant, but the terms are 'African-American' or 'black' now, Negro should not be used."

I am the ghost of embarrassment.