After I posted my question about its origins, I did a Google search on it, and several definitions said it was more likely from a West African language.
Mayonnaise, or mayonnaise lookin’.
Most of the time I’ve just heard “white ____”, as in “white boy”, etc. Whether it’s derogatory or not depends on context.
Growing up in the Barrio, the term most often used was Paddy. As in Irish. It was an all purpose term for white folks.
Back when I lived in Washington DC, I was called a “lima bean” by a homeless man I didn’t give money to.
I had to ask another guy at work if this was bad.
He starged giggling and said “Lima bean! Shit, I haven’t heard that in years! Yeah, it’s like honkey or cracka!” At that time, I hadn’t even heard of “cracker”, so he had to explain to me what that was too. By the end of the conversation I had the poor man in stitches. It’s not often a black man from Virginia gets to explain the etymology of “cracka” to a very white kid from Maine.
Since my boss was Israeli, I was also regaled with all the fun things you can call a gentile, which have been mentioned above.
I seem to remember one Chinese word for “foreigner” translates to something likes “foreign devil”. I’ll have to ask my boss for the definitive list.
My stepmom is Greek, and the term for “non-Greek” is something like “ouflo”…I don’t know how to spell it exactly. I also don’t know what the translation is, but from what I understand, calling someone a “piece of shit” is about on par.
Opie-lookin’ mutha fucka.
All along a nearly straight east-west line from Ethiopia to Indonesia (and perhaps even farther west; I’m not sure), variations of the term “Ferengi,” “Firang,” “Phiringi,” etc. are used to mean foreigners, Europeans, white people, or Americans, depending upon the context. Sometimes it’s a neutral term for “foreigner,” but often it’s a derogatory term as well.
I don’t know which language it originated in, but considering its extent and the history of the region in question, my guess is Persian.
I still like “cracka-ass cracka”. I just has that certain ring to it!
New Zealand’s indigenous people, Maoris, have traditionally called everyone else Pakehas which is supposed to be a politically-correct term nowadays. However, pakeha translates as white, foreigner or pig, none of which I’m particularly comfortable with. I don’t know whether you could apply this tag to New Zealanders who are Samoan, Tongan, Chinese, Vietnamese or any of the other races who make up our society these days - perhaps another passing kiwi could clarify that.
When I lived in Asia, all white people were assumed to be American. I found it really weird to hear a Filipino refer generally to a group of me and my classmates as Americans when perhaps only one or two out of ten actually were from the US or Canada.
by elmwood:
It’s not “penche huedo” it’s “Pinche Guero” (peenchay gwehroh). It means f :eek: cking blondie.
Also, gavacho is usually used to refer to american things and not people.
Gringo comes from the time general Pershing lead an expedition into Mexico to look for Pancho Villa, after he attacked a town in Texas. The people in Mexico shouted " green, go!" to the soldiers because of their olive uniforms.
Thank you! “Guero” (I knew it as “huero”) was the term I was looking for.
“Gringo” appears to be older than Pancho Villa. This from Dictionary dot com’s definition of “gringo”:
"Its first recorded English use (1849) is in John Woodhouse Audubon’s Western Journal: “We were hooted and shouted at as we passed through, and called ‘Gringoes.’”
It suggests that gringo came from griego, or greek, as in speaker of a foreign language: “that’s greek to me.”
What about mangi cake?
I’ve only heard both of these slurs referring to black people.
I’ve heard that poor whites in the Bahamas are referred to as “redlegs” but I don’t know if it is true.
Thanks for the clarification. Maybe it’s just the New Mexico accent … I always heard it as “huedo.”
Some Canadians would be a little uncomfortable with the idea of being lumped in with Americans.
See how freakin’ easy it is to be non-pc? 
That is an interesting perspective. I have always found it a bit disturbing, though, that it would ever be considered legitimate for someone to respond to a racial verbal insult (as much as I dislike the “N”-word and other such insults; I would be very happy to never hear them again!) by turning to violence.
I’m enjoying this thread. I’m white and have heard some of these terms before, but a lot of them are new to me.
I can’t stop thinking of something odd: that history, which has made so many racist epithets so wounding for so many, has made me (and perhaps most whites?) more or less immune. I’ve just read an entire page of insults directed at my race and not felt a thing.
Not so odd, I’d say. As an analogy, “big nose” would cease to be an insult if most people in the country had great honking noses, and big-nosed citizens were historically a privileged class of society. Equally, “whitey” doesn’t hurt so much since most people I know are white, and I have not/will not experience widespread discrimination for being white.
I guess our nonplussedness stems from the fact that few of us whities have experienced racial slurs coupled with a lifetime as a member of a disadvantaged minority group. It’s easy to laugh off a few insulting words when your majority racial group has not historically been subject to oppression, discrimination or unequal civil rights; it’s harder to ignore racial slurs when one has lived as a minority group member through systemmatic prejudice and inequity.
… but I’d also venture a guess that white people living in predominantly non-white countries feel the sting of anti-white racial insults much more than we do.
Sorry if this is dragging away from GQ.
Yup, roger that - it’s Ferengi in Malaysia. There is even a Batu Ferengi (beach) on the island of Penang, which now appropriately is filled with terrible beach hotels for package tourists.
As to its roots, well according to Linguist List (http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/) it was probably due to the Arabs.