It seems like the critical thing at stake in this thread is what 'slur' means. Like you, I think of slurs as being only the words associated with minority viole

It seems like the critical thing at stake in this thread is what 'slur' means. Like you, I think of slurs as being only the words associated with minority violence, maybe curse-words+, the sort of thing that would make me feel uncomfortably speaking aloud due to the associations. Evidently other people feel that it means something more like 'insult'. I can't say what this means in the broader context, but it might be a good signal to re-evaluate how you interpreted its use-age in the article.