You're basically proving my point. Whether you would use the word or not, you've still grown comfortable enough with it that you believe people can use it freely without it being a bad thing.
Black people want everyone to look at the word like it's the worst thing in the world, and you can't have that expectation when you freely use it around other people. Even if they are respectful enough not to use it, they won't see it as being as bad as we think it should be especially as we get farther and farther from the time when it really was used to terrorize black people on a daily basis.