I had something similar happen to me in college. It was a criminal justice course and we had a black woman who would link everything back to racism. Very nice lady, just very opinionated and thought everything could be linked to racism.

Well one day in class she was giving what she thought was racism shaping our. Current day language. She said that black people say "cook out" instead of "picnic."

Her reasoning being, "we say cookout instead of picnic because back in the day white people would bring food and watch a black person get hanged. So picnic means 'pick a nigger' to hang while we enjoy a meal outside."

Being that I had heard this rumor several years earlier and researched it, I knew she was wrong. So I raised my hand and explained that the word picnic is desended from the French word piquenique. Originally piquenique meant a meal in which everyone contributed, essentially a pot-luck, and didn't mean a meal eaten outside. Since a lot of these piqueniques were outside the word became associated with eating outside, and the word got changed over time to be spelled picnic.

She got upset that I had challenged her belief and told me that I didn't know what I was talking about and that I was a rich white kid. I let it go at that because I didn't want to disturb the class anymore.

After class I went up to her and told her that she didn't know anything about me. That I wasn't some privileged white kid, and that I probably grew up worse off than she did. I grew up on a farm where I started working at a very young age, and that my parents struggled to make $20k a year for a majority of my childhood. That the only reason I was able to attend college was because I enlisted in the national guard and then joined ROTC a few years later.

Surprisingly she apologized and gave me a hug. Like I said, very nice lady.