And not just The Scream, but he called him an "F---in' Coon!!!"

[Bluenorthwest]

64. I agree with much of what you say, Zimmerman at fault for the whole thing

but as a matter of this audio 'evidence' alone, it is not only a distraction but if I was on a jury and was told it said one of two things, I would be highly prone to reject both options, clearly someone is improvising one of the two. In addition, the word 'Punks' is frequently used toward young men being characterized as criminal and I have only seen or heard the other one in historical or literary contexts. Heard plenty of really vile racist crap, that word was antique when I was a kid, but I don't know if it is common in the South. Slurs for gay people are also not the same now as they were, so if a person told me 'he called him a pederast' I'd be puzzled but if a person said 'he called me a fag' that would ring true.

Now, 'punks' is itself a slur, it ascribes membership in a larger group to an individual by appearance, race is often a big part of that appearance although white teens get called punks in that context as well. The word has prison connotations, implies subservience to controlling others including sexual subservience and it is in fact a very vicious and deeply prejudiced word which is commonly used to characterize young men as criminal. Point being that if you tell me 'he just called him a punk' I'd say that calling someone a punk is a bigoted slur in that context. A word of hate.
So it is not like he either said 'coon' or 'brilliant genius' he used one of two disparaging terms about a stranger with prejudice. Punks is not a compliment, it is a slur. Of course, 'punk' is used to imply homosexual behavior as well, and thus many folks think it is a spiffy word, they use it freely.