A mistake? No one should get upset that he uses the term negro. He's an old guy living out in the middle of nowhere. There was a time when blacks demanded to be called negroes just as in the '60s they demanded to be called African Americans and then they demanded to be called blacks. He may be stuck in another era, culturally, but he is actually trying to be PC.
Point well taken, especially when you take into account such uses of the word as in the United Negro College Fund. But it is old- fashioned and it is one step removed from that other word, and that’s what his detractors heard and latched onto, whether that was what he meant or not. It doesn’t bother me — I was done with PC a ling time ago — but it was an easy pitch for his enemies to hit.
“in the ‘60s they demanded to be called African Americans”
The 60s saw “black and proud” and afro-American, IIRC.