Few Talked About Race at This School. Then a Student Posted a Racist Slur.

“That’s one of my biggest regrets,” she said, “is not doing something sooner.”

In an interview, Grace said she felt her use of the slur in the song did not come from a racist place. She suspected that she had said it because she had heard white classmates say it so regularly that it had become normal to her. “I think it was, seriously, it just slipped out, and I was used to hearing the word the last week or so,” Grace said. “It was just in my mind.”

Grace, 15, is home-schooled, and did not participate in the conversations at Owatonna High, but said she has started talking to her black friends more explicitly about how race affects them. “There’s people struggling with a lot that I’ve never experienced before because I’m white,” Grace said.

For her part, Kloey had brushed off criticism right after the episode. “What happened in the past doesn’t happen to them now,” she recalled thinking about black people. In her mind, she used the word as slang, not a slur directed toward black people.

But over the course of several meetings, that attitude started to change, she said.

She heard black classmates explain that they and their families never used the slur at home — she had assumed, she said, that most black people said it casually.

Slowly, Kloey said, she began to understand how the world still viewed black and white people differently. It made more sense, she said, why the word continued to resonate so painfully with black people.

“I feel bad,” she said. “I didn’t care what others thought and I didn’t care about others.”