From Websters:
- call a spade a spade
1 : to call a thing by its right name however coarse
2 : to speak frankly
No other definition offered.
From American Heritage:
call a spade a spade To speak directly, precisely, and forthrightly.
No other definitions offered.
The phrase was used properly in the context of the story. If the author intended a double entendre, it certainly doesn't come thru in his post; it would appear the only thing that makes a reader uncomfortable is that the author used a 2,500 year old phrase, still in common parlance, in association with a racial group who might object to one of the words in that phrase because such word (spade) was once used as a racial epithet. While I haven't heard the term used in that way in decades, it wouldn't matter if it were still in common parlance by the ignorant and vulgar....it has nothing to do with the phrase.
Am I to understand that we can speak of "Home Boys" only if they are white? The term "niggardly" should be applied only to Caucasions for fear of insulting someone?
I've no problem with TBM changing the title. I just want to make it clear that the use of this phrase does not, in itself, indict this author as a racist; or even as using poor judgment in his choice of phrase.
I'm one of the first here to decry racism when it appears on this board but let's "call a fig a fig and a bowl a bowl", as the term was originally used in its more sexually connotative form; or, as it's been used for the past 500 years, let's call a spade a spade. Racism requires more than your feelings being hurt; it requires intent or overt act to hurt them.
Rich
They all got it. 
There is absolutely no connotation of racial epithet in "calling a spade a spade" except by a willing recipient.