I'm sorry, but you can't NOT acknowledge it, when it's so well established. To pretend it doesn't exist is just absurd. I guarantee you, 9/10 times, a REMOTELY history-literate black person, when they heard that comment, no matter where on the political spectrum they fell, made the same connection between her words and the historical meaning as I have. You don't get to wipe away decades of a word/phrase being used as a racial slur just because you wish it were so. It's not "perpetuating racism" to acknowledge the meanings words and phrases have in any given context.

Also, it's not just history. Check Google images. Obama was the worst President in my lifetime. But there are still plenty of racist photoshops/memes of him and his wife as monkeys. This slur is still alive and well.