My grandparents, who have long since passed, had a few unkind comments about Japanese people. They lived through Pearl Harbor, and my grandfather fought in the war. There was just a deep distrust they held which I didn't relate to, but I tried to understand their perspective. I was 10 when my mom met and married my stepdad. A year later, when my brother was born, we were visiting his parents. His dad was rather fond of the N word. My mom had a fit and told him that if he expected to have any sort of relationship with his grandson, then he'd better never use that word in his presence. The only other incident I remember off hand was when I was driving with a friend and her mom. We lived in an area with a lot of Jewish people. There was some sort of road rage incident, and the other driver yelled something like, "Get out of my way, you fucking Gentile." The friend's mom shot back with, "Go jump on a boxcar." That totally confused me, so I asked my mom about it later. I was pretty horrified when I found out what she meant.
For more than 20 years I've been working with Japanese students, either teaching them ESL or finding American families to host them for a temporary English Immersion Program with International Understanding. We've had very few blacks host the Japanese and I've been told to my face by some blacks that the Japanese are the most racist people in the world. They may or may not be but I do know one thing, they're never going to change their minds or learn anything if they aren't exposed to blacks. The black families who have hosted have always been successful host families and the Japanese students have never said one bad word about them. With only one exception all the black families who've hosted for me have been recommended to be host families again. The one I didn't recommend was the one where the mother had cancer and it was just too much for her. Her neighbors stepped in and helped but I was not the one who recruited the family and if I had known then what I know now, I would have insisted on a different family as it really was a hardship on that family.
I still remember walking up to one guy and asking him if he'd like to host a Japanese student and he just stood up as tall as he could and said "I'm Korean!". I said, "Excuse me, I thought you were American!" Good grief. I guess Koreans, even American Koreans really hate the Japanese. Actually that's not true because since that incident, I've had a lot of Korean-American families that have hosted Japanese students but that one guy still sticks in my mind. There are racists in all races and bigots in every ethnic community.
My parents never let us use derogatory words for anybody and I still remember when my brother got in trouble for calling a kid at school a "greaser." My father was all upset until my brother explained that a "greaser" (this was the 60's) was a kid who greased back his hair. My dad was thinking it was a derogatory term for a Mexican, which is what it was when he was young.
Good Lord I went off on some tangents here, happy reading people.