[QUOTE=Rube E. Tewesday]
… I seem to recall that it has been used as a term of offence in New England, specifically as applied to French Canadian migrant workers.
[/QUOTE]
Edmund Muskie, and the Canuck Letter.
CMC fnord!
Supposed acronym-based etmymologies like Worthy (or Westernised) Oriental Gentleman, Prisoner Of her Majesty, or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge are almost always unfounded. Maybe we need a new law for this - GorillaMan’s Law perhaps, since it has he who I first recall making this point? 
Another term in this category is ''cracker" for a white person. While originally pejorative, and still often used in this sense, it is sometimes used self-referentially, and with a sense of pride, by some “Florida Crackers” and “Georgia Crackers.”
“Okie” may also be in this category, being pejorative in the 1930s, less so now.
I know there are some old words that were insults way back when, and have lost their spefically pejorative meanings over time. “Barbarian” is one such word – it was originally a specific Greek insult for those who didn’t speak Greek (to whom the speech of non-Greeks presumably sounded like “bar bar bar …”).
[QUOTE=elbows]
I understood WOG stood for Worthy Oriental Gentleman, and was coined by the colonial powers in Asia to address the locals of nonsubjugated (Thailand, i.e.) nations.
Of course, in no time it was shortened to Wog and became a slanderous term for any Asian.
And then there is POM. Which I understood initially meant, Prisoner of their Majesties, meaning the British crown.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always been under the impression that those two acronyms were merely apocryphal etymologies of “wog” and “pom,” and that neither of them is actually the true origin of the word. Almost every Aussie dictionary i’ve ever read says that the origin of “pom” is uncertain. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the most likely origin of the word is a shortening of “pomegranate,” and give some quotations in support of this:
Regarding the “prisoner” acronym, the OED says:
As for the origin of “wog,” all the OED has to say is:
I was going to say “get off scot free”, but when I looked it up, its got nothing to do with being a Scottish scrooge. Evidently the meaning comes from the old norse word “skatt” which means tax.
Thanks Usram and Mhendo , serves me right for listening to my good friend the drunken aussie git! 
(He also taught me to play Spot the Pom, while traveling across SE Asia. He was damn good at it too!)
[QUOTE=gitfiddle]
I guess this would be the n-word, as a lot of people use it without the gravity it once had
[/QUOTE]
The fact that you refer to it as “the n-word” implies is still has a lot of gravity!
I think a lot of it has to do with the relative position of the people being referenced. “Whitey” isn’t much of an insult because whites are (historically and currently) on top. Likewise, calling a guy a “bastard” is certainly an insult, but usually not taken with nearly the same weight as calling a woman a “bitch”.
So it would seem to be that the words you’re looking for are those aimed at people who were once much worse off than they are today. “Mick” and “paddy” are perfect examples, as are “wop” and “dago”. They may still be considered insults to some, but not nearly to the extent as “the n-word” or numerous slurs aimed at Latinos.
My old dictionary also lists “goy” as an “offensive” term used by Jews to describe someone who is not Jewish 
The Hawaiian term for people is kanaka. In the thirties, forties and fifties, this term was considered to be the equivalent of calling Blacks niggers. Presently, it has been reclaimed again by present day Hawaiians, usually as kanaka maoli - indigenous Hawaiians.
We are still working on whether Chini and Portagi are still insults. Kepani and Philipino, no longer are.
[QUOTE=Blake]
Taking the mick doesn’t have similar origins. “Taking the mick” is a short form of “Taking the mickey”. There are two plausible explanations for the term and neither has anything to with the Irish.
A mickey is the bull equivalent of a teenager: sexually but not physically mature, usually from 8-18 months old. Taking the mickey out of a bull is literally castration and the expression is referring to taking the aggression from someone prone to respoding to needling.
The second explanation is simply that it is rhyming slang for “taking the Mickey Bliss”. ie piss.
“Take the mick” is one variation on taking the mickey, “Extracting the Michael” and “Taking the Mike” are also variations, but each derives from “taking the mickey”, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Irish or people named Michael. Basically this seems to be another case of Welched and Niggardly where people are trying very hard to find something offensive when no evdience of offence exists.
[/QUOTE]
Etymonline disagrees - but it’s unfortunate that it’s hard to follow up its references: Search 'mick' on etymonline
I never realized Hottentot was a racial slur until it was pointed out on this board (and not from any recent thread, it was a while back). I honestly thought the Hottentots were a tribe. Ignorance fought there, for sure.
[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
Etymonline disagrees
[/QUOTE]
No, it doesn’t.
The only reference to Mick in the website you linked to is the word “Mick”. It makes no mention whatsoever of the phrase “take the Mick”. You do understand that phrases like “Take the Mick” and “Coon’s age” can use words without any racial implications?
[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
And ‘taking the mick’ has mostly lost its similar origins.
[/QUOTE]
Wasn’t “taking the mick” originally “taking the MICKEY?” I was told in England that it derived from Mickey Mouse, and doesn’t refer to the Irish.