Several observations here:
1. Boys will be boys.
2. Everyone has used the "N" word, people need to get over it.
3. It was a really crappy, small-minded trick, if it's true.
4. Boys grow up to regret some of the stupid stuff they did as kids. If this really happened, I bet Allen regretted it a long time ago.
You're right on all points, but I'd love to prove this Shelton guy a liar. I'm not content to just say "boys will be boys" when there is no clear consensus that Allen was really like this. When Shelton's roommate and others who knew Allen say they know nothing of Allen's alleged racial indiscretions, that to me raises the b.s. flag on Shelton's claims. It would be fun to slam them shut to show the left wing hatchet job being done on Allen.
I haven't. Not once.
I can't say that I've never used the word but I can't remember ever using it derogatorily to describe either a black individual or blacks as a group.
Back in the early 1970's, I heard radical college students at my school, a small private liberal arts college, use the "n" word for fellow students who were obedient to campus authorities, immersed in their studies, and uninterested in radical causes. This was about the time that a book by Jerry Farber entitled The Student as a Nigger (Pocket Books, 1970), was in vogue among campus radicals. Farber, whose book had nothing to do with blacks, contended that colleges and universities were tools of the Establishment, and that their purpose was to dominate, repress, and exploit students while turning them into apathetic automatons.