Maybe I missed it, but I was not aware that this was a slur used exclusively by black Americans.
Nor was I aware that this was a slur directed exclusively at black conservatives.
Was this definition just invented as a matter of convenience? I suspect people in 1880 used the term more widely.
I agree with you - never heard it used in that way..as I posted before I saw your reply, I thought it was a slur against THEM! Guess we are supposed to get “with the program?”
[Short for raccoon. Sense 2, perhaps after Zip Coon, an African-American character (depicted as an upstart freeman) in the song “Zip Coon” frequently sung in 19th-century blackface minstrel shows (the character perhaps being so named in reference to the black facial mask of the raccoon and to the practice of hunting and eating raccoons frequently mentioned in minstrel show songs), possibly influenced by 19th-century slang coon, rural white American (often one of modest means and opposed to the slave-owning Southern establishment), fellow, so called in reference to the association of coonskin with American frontiersmen.]
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/coon
The song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDbfJDTiuJw
1834 a popular song. Hardly racist.