When two very similar words (in this case, two different constructions of the same word) have the same denotation but near-opposite connotations, it's inevitable that one will sometimes be used when the other is intended, because of the way human brains process and produce language. This phenomenon has nothing whatsoever to do with racist ideologies, unless you subscribe to debunked pop-Freudian notions of slips of the tongue as revealing deep-seated prejudices in a "return of the repressed."
To elaborate: when "... of color" (e.g., "writer of color") is considered by many to be perhaps the most sensitive term available—because most people would just say "Black writer" instead, and the primary reason to choose "... of color" is usually to emphasize solidarity/intersectionality with other nonwhite identities—and yet a very closely related term* is considered offensive, then sometimes, some people will end up saying the latter when they consciously want to say the former, simply because the terms are so similar and both have the same denotation, and the brain is a weird place when it comes to talking. This is a bit less common when the terms occupy displaced syntactical positions (in this case, after the noun vs. before it), but it does still happen that way.
This is doubly true for people with dyslexia, who are very often prone to slips of the tongue even when the denotations are different (classic example: "Dinosaurs went distinct millions of years ago"). My point is that for verbal dyspraxics, whether they technically qualify as neurodivergent, no amount of education and no degree of good intentions is going to save them from verbal slip-ups.
Mercedes Lackey is on record as being diagnosed with dyslexia. She is also verbally dyspraxic; watch any YouTube interview with her and this is immediately obvious if you know what to look for. The stumbles are very brief, and usually she immediately corrects herself, and she is brilliant and articulate so that's the general impression one comes away with. But it's there throughout her speech patterns. I just clicked on a random interview and she stumbles over her words seven times in the first three minutes, including (speaking of her birds) "They're extremely intelligence."
*I was about to hit "post" when I looked at the prior discussion regarding repeating the term in this thread. I have removed it for the same reasons articulated by MGibster above. If the term did not already appear several times earlier in this thread, I would consider it morally mandatory to include the term itself, so as to make plain exactly what Lackey said.
