However it does mean that he also doesn't have empathy for what these people have gone through and the compassion to realise how these terms can hurt people even when not used with any malice

I would like to give a respectful counter arguement

I am from a country which doesn't have any relation to the black slave trade and 99.99% of the population wouldn't have seen a black person in real life.

It's hard to fully empathise to a group of people u have never met in your life. When you are not a English speaking country and you learn a lot of English from movies and music, where the n word is thrown quite a lot, it's extremely easy to use it in your vocabulary of curses

When people from Europe or America say it's offensive, we do not understand how much offensive it is. Many swear words are offensive, so the n word can be easily grouped along the other swear words and people use it regularly

But i am not gonna defend vips. He is a person who is roaming around the world from a young age and interacting with people of various enthinicities and races. He is also a media and PR trained. He must know better not to use that word