Sage, there is still a lot of racism in Latinoamerica that people here try to deflect saying “is not like from US”. The racism here is mostly passive aggressive and “just joking but not really kind”. While minorities here tend to have a way less US centric view on race there is still a ton of issues that people prefer to ignore or brush off.
While I’m glad there is no the hypersensitive racial panic like in the US, the shitty thing is that actual racism is generally brushed off as a ‘non-problem’. So people here still make cringe racial jokes about a Afro Mexican singer or treat indigenous people as second class citizens.
That is true. All asians are called Chinese or chino/chinita. The casual racism from what I've seen is the casual racist banter you can pull with friends. As in, "you dumb mick," or, "I thought you were mexican and you call this salsa?" At that level from professional workers it's jokey and funny. Those casual jokes that are frowned upon in the USA are more broadly accepted world wide.
Yet at the same time the institutional racism is on another level. There are caste systems, social stratification, and state actioned economic inequality. In America saying it's not racism it's economic inequality is seen as a racist statement. Saying "poverty is your fault," is the same. Sometimes it's heavy handed but it's often true that it stems from a belief that you are better than another person.
I'm confused now. Maybe crushing hard on funny, jokey racism between colleagues is a better path to solving social inequality than accepting it.
My final thought, is extreme classism better than casual racism?
