I use it as a non-race thing all the time. What the fuck are you even talking about? Sometimes people just say shit and it’s not some deeply embedded code. And no, I’m not a white person.

As for saying the N-word, that’s a completely different thing. That word has an extremely strong history and is going to have some degree of racial connotation even if you don’t use it toward a black person because of that. At very least its usage in even an amicable manner is often appropriation of black culture. You can’t compare that to a generic word like “thug” which is pretty much used across the English speaking world very often NOT to refer to black people specifically since half of those countries don’t have the same type of race relations issues that the USA has.