There are some ethnic slurs that have been allowed to die in my lifetime. I think it's worth contemplating why this particular one hasn't.

Words don't die.

Yup. Linked is another classic case of "duh, I didn't know I was being offensive."

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1990/Ar...8aade8c4a913b1

That's mullock! When was the last time you suffered from a febricula or partaken in a pannychis with a yoke-mate or a fopdoodle? There are also "dead words" which are words so over used they have lost significance. Cool, nice, good, bad, etc come to mind.

Words don't die. My unfamiliarity with words doesn't mean no human uses those words or that humans will never again use the word.

As for words that are considered racial slurs, there is a difference between outsiders wanting a word to "die" and expecting the word to not be used by people within the group. Outsiders can grapple with that on their own.

At least the artist in Pittsburgh wasn't an asshole who doubled down about how it was OK for him to use the term when the offensive term was pointed out to him by those who find it offensive. (I didn't know the origin of the word either; must be too much Joanie and Happy Days in my childhood. Now I do, and I can use my thesaurus to find alternate descriptions for pulchritudinous men.)