My wife was raised back east in a school that had many minorities and she had very close friends from that group. One day, having herd the term spoken with her and these friends, she used it when one of them did something stupid, like they were always using it. They all told her she was NEVER allowed to use it. Only they could. She has not one ounce of bigotry in her, so she was taken aback somewhat by their response, but she never did it again.
There's a difference between your wife learning it for the first time from a peer group and using it before understanding the full history and context of the word, and an already grown coach who knows all of that using it to describe a kid he's recruiting.
Context matters.