If the question is "I wonder if I can get away with… " then the answer is a big fat NO every single time.
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So much this!
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maybe read the rest of my comment. “asshole” is obviously a current and mainstream offensive word. furthermore it really doesn’t have an innocuous use so it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison with the topic at hand.
i can easily remember not to call my boss an asshole. i will try to keep in mind that i shouldn’t use the word spook in the company of those it might offend, but i may not remember. my memory has limits.
the fact of the matter is there is an entire database of racial slurs that i am most likely never going to be able to commit to memory (and frankly wouldn’t want to), so yes memory is an issue, and no i’m not kidding. that’s why i think the effort is best saved for the ones that are current and mainstream.
Literally every worry you have, all of them, are solved by saying “Self, lets not use labels for people today”.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
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Here’s a really easy solution to your conundrum:
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Right, like how almost no one uses the term “f*ggot” to mean “bundle of sticks” anymore.
Make sure that they don’t use the word in any context that may have racist overtones?
No one is claiming any use of the word—past or present—is racist. But understanding how the word has been used in a racist way is necessary if you want to avoid racist language.
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There literally is not. No one is doing that, making lists of “forbidden words”… If you say something that you did not realize was offensive and someone calls you out, how about apologize and endeavor to do better?
FFS, no one is talking about a god damn language police here! @thomdunn wrote about a word that has racist connotations, in part to show how language does evolve and also to advocate to…
Is that REALLY so difficult to do? Being mindful of the things that you do and say in no way restricts you, it merely reminds you that you don’t exist outside of the context of others and of society.
I’ll add that making our society more inclusive, kinder, and more responsive to peoples cares and concerns benefits ALL of us.
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There used to be a site sponsored by Black folks that did document all the racial slurs and insults levied against us since the Antebellum days, but the domain is long gone, last I checked.
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Also you can pretty easily tell whether a word is being used in an offensive way.
Okay: “The knob fell off the door.”
Not okay: “The knob wouldn’t give me a raise.”
Okay: “Let’s watch a scary movie.”
Not Okay: “There is a scary standing over on the street corner.”
Okay: “I love my new water kettle.”
Not okay: “The kettles have taken over around here.”
This doesn’t take memorizing a database.
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Oh, Google the Peter Jackson Dam Busters controversy!
I probably hear it in the wild used in a racialized manner maybe every five years or so. On the other hand. when I am doing research in white supremacist forums and similar places it is incredibly common. It is somewhat less frequent than the N word, but probably more frequent than the other anti-black slur that starts with the same first two letters.
Because in lots of places it is still widely used as a slur and failing to use that caution means you will hurt people you don’t mean to.
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Are they allowed to confirm or deny their employment?
I would hope that “spooky” doesn’t carry these same connotations. Calling an individual a spook is easy to avoid, since I could instead call them a ghost (or any of the numerous other words that mean essentially the same thing) or a spy. But words like “scary” or “creepy” don’t have quite the same meaning as “spooky” in my eyes, and I would certainly hope that if I’m talking about a “spooky old cemetery”, nobody in their right mind would assume I mean that there are a lot of Black people buried there and I hate them.
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Honestly, I have no idea what this is about! I’m guessing here, after thinking about it for a while, that it’s to do with being a servant, or subservient to white privilege?
Here in the U.K., where the majority of people in service were white, and more often than not female, the use of ‘fetch’ wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, so I wonder why there should be such an adverse reaction to such an innocuous word and it’s everyday use?
“Fetch” is what a dog does. I can definitely see people being uncomfortable with that regardless of race.
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Fetch also is a term in oceanography.
Even though English tends to have three separate terms for many concepts-- French, Latin and German, the ritual proscribing of swaths of vocabulary based on tenuous etymology bothers me. It cuts one off from literature. Yeah there are terms which were invented expressly for nasty ideologies-- and once is perfectly justified in looking askance at writers who use them.,
When I was in college, I remember laying out on an article on the activities of white supremicists. I had to look up “miscegenation,” The word only matters to people who either buy into a racist ideology, or the people who are watching those people…
But, there are other, words, of more general purpose, like fetch, which have been in use for hundreds oif years, in many different contexts and it’s unfair to say “burn all those books because oceanology is a slur against the working class.”
Etymology is an inexact science,. It is often wrong. It’s often spurious. And, sometimes, it gives rise to even nastier injustices (cf. Walter Scott’s use of pork vs swine, veal vs calf, and his contributions to the ideology of Anglo-Saxonism-- now renamed as Early English)
Contextual comprehension isn’t rote memorization. There’s contexts you’ll be unaware of and then you can learn. If you’re literally unwilling to learn the context of racial slurs as you encounter them then you’re unwilling to the bare minimum not to be a dick to other people. Even if you don’t care that people will notice that you’re unwilling to the bare minimum not to be a dick to other people, a conscience is a terrible thing to waste.
You’re not being asked to memorize a list. You’re being asked to listen to human beings who’ve been wronged.
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Compare with the huge compilation of euphemisms, slurs, and multi-entendres in The Bald-Headed Hermit and the Artichoke: An Erotic Thesaurus. Racist and sexist word lists will trend toward both infinity and obsolescence.
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No one is advocating for that.
No one is asking you to be magically prescient and know exactly what might be inappropriate to say in any given context. But if you’re willing to listen to people and learn when you’re called or corrected on word choice, you should be fine. Understanding that “fetch” might have negative connotations when used as a directive toward a Black person because of a long history of belittling, dehumanizing racism in the US should expand your understanding of the word and when it might be inappropriate to use. “THEY’LL BURN ALL THE OCEANOGRAPHY BOOKS!!!” is an absurd, reductionist argument to leap to.
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Back to good old oral tradition, then. 
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