When Vizzini, in “The Princess Bride,” says, “. . .you’ve bested my Spaniard. . .” I always get the giggles. It somehow dehumanizes the guy and yet there’s nothing inaccurate about it.
“I give you my word as a Spaniard.”
“Sorry, I’ve known too many Spaniards.”
I was born in St. Louis, and I grew up thinking “Hoosier” was an insult.
In the SF area, some Mexican-Americans are offended by “chicano”, because they claim it’s an LA-centric term.
Some SoCal Hispanics are offended by NoCal Hispanics calling them “sureño”. (In the south, norteño/sureño is primarily about street/prison gang membership, but in the north, it’s sometimes a more general cultural identification that has nothing to do with the gangs.)
I’ve seen Anglos from Texas get annoyed with “Tejano” (when spoken in English).
I’m not sure where it falls on the offensiveness scale, but my second day in Baltimore, someone called me “Eye-talian,” and I cracked up laughing. I’m a mutt, with ancestors from just about every European country except Italy. But, even if I were Italian-American, it just sounds like such a ridiculous and archaic thing to say that I think I’d have a hard time seeing it as an insult. It might be different if I’d been raised in Baltimore, of course.
It never bothered me…
I think what you mean to say is, ‘Get some self esteem, stupid!’ Hopefully even with your advanced thinking you can consider that your own situation is quite different from that of many, many others, especially in your own country.
It makes sense in some contexts (in fact there’s a whole episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia about it), but as with ‘The blacks,’ ‘The gays,’ ‘Females’ and a few others, it’s usually a good bet that anyone using ‘The Jews…’ to start a sentence is about to make a racist overgeneralization. Sort of like starting off with ‘I’m not racist, but…’
Don’t forget Haole.
There was a court case in Hawai’i a couple of years ago where this anglo tourist was driving poorly, and two local dude beat him up, while calling him a ‘fucking haole’. When the trial started, and ‘hate crime’ started to get bandied about, they claimed that they didn’t mind the color of his skin and his ethnicity, they were just pissed because he drove like a ‘fucking haole’, and that it was just coincidence that he actually WAS a haole.
Eh, we once had a young dinner guest and a family member asked him if he was Swedish. He got quite adamant that no, he was NORWEGIAN, and started to explain how being called Swedish was considered an insult, and was offensive.
Er, not to us. We’re American (as was the dinner guest BTW) but our ancestors came from…Sweden. Although not as recently as our guest’s came from Norway.
A lot of people get offended way too easily.
Yeah, but then there was that offensive deal about your father. . .
Oh no, you didn’t! Funny they even finished their meal with you.
There was always that wounded victor’s pride lurking somewhere behind the vile insinuation. The oldsters in my family, newcomers to America, couldn’t even eat rutabaga without a self-satisfied chuckle.
My understanding of why Oriental is semi-insulting is due to etymology. Orient = East. So basically you’re defining a group of people by what direction they are from you, because clearly you and your geographic area is the center of the universe.
I’m with you there. Perhaps it is a localised thing to the US, whereas “Nigger” will get you in trouble pretty much worldwide.
As a white Brit I can confidently say that there is no term based around my race and/or colour that I will find offensive. I guess I am lucky.
Some people are just clueless. My Parents talk about going to “the chinky” to get food. I’ve tried to explain it to them. I’ve used the example of my mate Adrian, of chinese descent, that is the gentlest person you’d ever meet that the only time I ever saw get physical was when someone called him a chink.
But they just don’t get it. my Dad usually replies “but I don’t get offended when someone calls me a Brit” and then I give up.
Wouldn’t that argument make “westerner” semi-insulting?
Um…we’re just not saying it to your face. 
A good friend of mine found out, through somebody’s tracing his family tree, that instead of being a Bohunk, as he called himself, he was Swiss. He asked me for a rude word for Swiss people. I checked around, and with the help of the SDMB, he found out he was a Cheese-Holer. He was delighted.
Bohunk?
Hey, I resemble that remark! It’s a slur for Bohemians – as in people from the Czech region of Bohemia, not artsy types (though Vaclav Havel is proof that it’s possible to be both). Because folks from the same general area tend to get lumped together, though, “Bohunk” has been variously applied to individuals of primarily Ukrainian, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish, and other eastern European extraction.
As my wife likes to say, “I am Japanese-American. I am not a rug.”
Mick or Bridget for Irish. For a period of time, many Irish female immigrants came over the pond as servants and, in some communities, rich American women would just refer to their female Irish servants as “Bridget” or “Bridie” no matter what their real name was.
“Red” gets pretty tiresome for redheads, but it’s better than in the UK where the get silly with “Ginger” instead.
I think any term that gets misused or overused can become offensive even if the initial users didn’t set out for it to be that way. I do laugh about being called a Yank by the Brits. After all, they originally meant it as an insult and we threw it back in their faces by wearing it with pride. I think it is a term of affection for the most part anyway.