I didn't address your language choice; I was giving my opinion on her use of the word being wrong. I chose to piggyback off your comment because I saw what you wrote about coming from middle America.

What I was trying to get across is that the people YOU know are typically uneducated, as you put it. Things are extremely different across the country due to ethnic and economic makeup, and it isn't fair to cast such a wide net as "uneducated" on a large percentage of people. I will cop to your stance that many of these people lack in emotional intelligence, as I'm sure that many of the teenagers I worked with will outgrow this word eventually when they get out into the world a little more. But saying that most people who use this word are uneducated, in any sense of the word, is simply not true. In my students' case, it is an unintentional reclaiming of the word that haunted their grandparents as they were integrated into schools, as well as a general cultural thing that they've picked up from people older than them, and the other kids they're friends with have picked it up as well. They've turned what was once a hateful word into something that is almost meaningless to them at this point.

Is it that way everywhere? No. But use of the word isn't always cause to demonize it or those who use it (again, not saying you are).