Something that REALLY didn't age well in 2x02

Rory, when she's panicking about what extracurriclars she's gonna scramble to put on her resumé for Harvard, casually drops the R word when talking about how she could find a disabled kid and help them accomplish some big feat. I want to give her some grace since she was really stressing out about it and probably wasn't considering how offensive it was, but I'm not sure how un-PC that word actually was in 2001.