My mother was calling black people Afro Americans up until a couple of years ago. And not one of her black coworkers ever corrected her in the 20 years she worked with them. I told her it had changed to AA and she was dumbfounded. She asked when they changed and I said, “Oh about 30 years ago.” It was the first time in my lifetime I had seen her speechless.
My mother died 8 years ago and still said colored. My mother was a racist in many ways especially when she talked to the TV.
However, she was a lead lady in wire processing, she took the new employees, mostly black, due to affirmative action and government contracts, under the wing and taught each of them the job until they got it and were self sufficient. She spoke fondly of each of them and often stayed without pay.
She never saw the dissonance between her spoken views and her actual behavior with her co-workers.
When she retired many of them brought her personal gifts.
I worked with a guy whose parents were Italians working in Ethiopia. BTW he was white. He was the on;y person where I worked who could actually claim he was African-American. He shut up some whiners at a couple of meetings I was at by asking them what they thought he was.