There are very many good, tolerant people here.
But there are a very good many racist persons as well, at least in my experience.
I'm not talking at all about what I get here being a "yanqui" or a "gringo". Those terms are rarely used disparagingly against me, although sometimes they are, sure. But even when they are used disparagingly, there is still some respect behind the meaning - I'm not a subhuman in those cases, just a "capitalist pig" or the like. I'm actually OK with that, anyway. Heh.
I've posted about racism I've seen here at least a few times in this forum. I have a different perspective than many people here, having seen some real racism up close and personal directed at my family. People who wouldn't rent to us specifically because of my wife and her older sister being Paraguayan, attitudes of people like a certain portero who has heard my wife speak guarani to her friends (doesn't know her beyond perhaps a few exchanged words on occasion) and made some pretty disparaging remarks to my wife based on where she's from. Neighbors that made very racist comments about my family to their friends in front of their maids (yep, they didn't seem to "be there"), who were mostly Paraguayans and had made friends with my wife - comments that were repeated to my wife by her friends. My older sister-in-law's first real boyfriend's mother who refused to even meet her when they were dating, and then the same boyfriend who spewed all kinds of nasty racist remarks at her and the rest of us when she broke up with him because he couldn't pay his rent and asked her if he could move in with us for awhile (we had treated him like a part of the family, inviting him out to eat with us, inviting him to dinners at the table, etc. He got our numbers over a couple of months' time and after the break up was insufferably insane - as a side remark, it's been my experience that the boys here are every bit as hysterical in a relationship as I've seen guys on the forum complaining about women here). Both of my sisters-in-law having been called "paraguaya sucia" by classmates. When they were supposedly "going out" with a boy at school, the boy wouldn't be seen with them at rec or lunch, while all the other girls were with their boyfriends.
Very few Argentinos of this type of person like to even think about admitting they have "ni una sola gota de sangre india." They consider themselves European, and many are, but many are just as mixed as anyone else.
I dislike PC. I despise racism and elitism and prejudice. I'm guilty of all of that from time to time, being human, but I struggle as much as possible to not be that type of person. There should be some sort of balance between too PC and too permissive. I don't know where that line is. But here, it is 'way more tolerated than back where I come from because "people are free to speak their mind." Like I say, I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's here in the way people behave towards others in a goodly portion of what I've seen of Buenos Aires.
Then again, one of the things I like about Argentina is the very thing that allows such attitudes to exist - people letting people be, socially, for the most part. And I must say, I've never encountered violent racism, just "missed opportunities" racism, shall we say.
