We previously had a casual, low-key racism that no one minded

A certified USian braindead take, from a typical USian thinking their view of the world is the only possible one. As the commenter above has said, words derived from ‘negro’ just mean black people around the world. If you’re so dense as to think any word meaning ‘black’ is racist, then you must stop using ‘black’ altogether, and also euphemisms like ‘dark’ too. And stop using ‘white’ since it’s contrasted with ‘black’.

But who am I kidding? USians do actually think everyone must do exactly that, by eliminating words like ‘blacklist’ and ‘whitelist’. Next, they’ll insist that ‘black metal’ and ‘Black plague’ are racist, and that darkness must stop being associated with death and evil spirits, and that being afraid of darkness is racist.