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What is more baffling is that this attitude is exported internationally.

When I was a kid, it would never occur to me that the Russian word негр has negative connotations.

Now, the word негр disappeared from public use.

It didn't disappear. I still constantly hear and see in the internet usage of негр, нига or нигер (transliteration of the n-word). But the meaning always depends on the context, most of the time it is neutral - just referring to a black person, sometimes negative - infamous S.L. Jackson phrase "что этот ниггер себе позволяет", and sometimes positive: "нига, как дела" - can be equivalents to "what's up, bro", it's rarely used as joke-greeting. Local blacks don't seem to mind when someone call them this way, because it rarely has negative connotations.

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