This article says that ‘spooks’ is a racist term in North America.
But I’ve read ever so many books which use the term ‘spook’ as a spy and in the normal sense, and none as a derogatory term.
Educate me here, please.
Depends entirely on context. Call a black guy a spook and you are definitely using a racist insult. Refer to a white employee of the CIA as a spook and you’re just using a slang term for a spy.
Exactly so. TV stations are highly risk adverse, so I can see why they wouldn’t take a chance on someone seeing the title and taking the wrong meaning.
It has a history of being a derogatory term applied to black people. I don’t know how that came to be, but it may have died off. I’ve heard it in period-piece movies and TV shows but never in real life, and unlike many other slurs, I can’t even think of a controversy involving use of that word.
Ask Professor Coleman Silk.
I don’t think this use of the term was ever widespread, and it has certainly died off.
It could have originated because some less than enlightened people think there are sections of many cities where you don’t see people at night on the streets, only eyes and teeth moving hither & yon.
Hmmm.
Heard a 75-year-old Southern male relative use it 2 years back.
I suspect it’s going to die out altogether within my lifetime.
Yeah, it’s very antiquated, something mainly heard from older people. It is also used for CIA and other secret agents as well, so it depends totally on context, kind of like a “dick” can be the sex organ, an obnoxious person, or a private detective.
Both terms have the same origin, of course.
Online Etymological Dictionary
Both usages seem to appear at around the same time, so there may be some common instigator or one might have engendered the other.
Many derogatory terms, like many sexual slang terms, have other everyday usages. For example, coon is short for raccoon, as in Davy Crockett’s coonskin cap, but also derogatory for black.
This tickles me no end. I’m not sure why, but I find it hilarious.
What about a BLACK clandestine operative of the CIA? Huh, how about THEM apples?
Why don’t you go up to a black CIA operative, call him a “spook”, and report back to us on how that goes. 
How about a black, clandestine operative of the CIA…who has died, and is floating around going ‘Boo’? Haven’t thought of that, have you???
If you called him a “spook spook,” even with a smile, he would probably curse your soul for all eternity. And that would suck, y’know?
Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “spook” to refer to anything but an intelligence agency operative. I had no idea it was used for black people.
The first cite in the OED indicates the term meant “frightened negro.” It might have been a conflation of the two, influenced by things like Wille Best’s roles in films.
I always loved the fact that the movie Shine won an Oscar. No black leaders complained about the name because the racist meaning is pretty much forgotten.
My 78-year-old father used to use “spook” in its derogatory sense fairly often (he has since stopped pretty much all derogatory language. Good for him!) Anyway, it probably is dying out as a slur. Didn’t Archie Bunker use it?
Re: “shine”, I have only heard that as a racial slur once, on an episode of Hill Street Blues. I thought it was something they made up to avoid running afoul of the censors with a real slur. I had no idea it was ever really used as a slur.
It’s offensive to ghosts; they prefer to be called “Spectral Americans,” thank you.
A few years back a San Mateo newspaper ran this front page headline about a citizen’s run-in with local wildlife:
Wild Coon Spooks Man
That had to be intentional. I can’t imagine why they even made it front page news otherwise.
It’s probably survives today mostly in the 1910 jazz song Shine, recorded by Louis Armstrong and more recently by Ry Cooder on his Jazz album.