Negro is a tricky word for us here. The context and the speaker matter. It is a legacy word so it is used in that context as you know. In Spanish, it is the word for black so I heard it a lot and it always got my attention. In Buenos Aires, and perhaps in the culture overall, it is not uncommon for someone to call you by a characteristic. Some examples would be Fat, Skinny, Blond, Redhead, Curly Hair, Old, Young, all of that. I had a roommate from London and everyone would him Blond while they called me Negro. (And some would call be Brown or Tan too.) They didn’t mean anything mean by it, and they say they don’t have the same racial history that we do here. But, I’m not sure I ever fully understood why that’s a thing.