"I blame teachers. What are our kids even learning in school?"
I imagine they do their best, I suspect that some kids are particularly resistant to learning things.
There is likely a correlation between the refusal to accept things like the words you use having meaning and certain groups of people being disproportionally discriminated against. Maybe there's a fear that if you accept basic things like the impact of the words you use, you might end up actually accepting things like that certain groups of people are disproportionally killed by law enforcement.
I get that some people aren't going to want to accept that they have something in common with people that are behaving in an abhorrent way, it's much more comfortable to either refute the facts that you're being given about it or make excuses for the people who are behaving abhorrently.
Of course, you're also going to need to mock anyone who actually agrees that there's a problem so it's clear that you're right. Everybody knows that pointing at someone else and laughing means that you're actually in the right, right?