(Ed.'s Note: We have argued at length over the local use of phrases like gabacho and gringo with one of our good friends (a pocho at that) and he will argue with the deepest conviction that those words are pejorative and hurtful to the person or group whether the speaker is prejudiced or not.
We counter that - as recipients of words like "mojados" and "meskins" or worse - whether the speaker is prejudiced or not, we can be afforded the use of such words in the course of making ourselves understood. In other words, used them to be understood without the intent to injure anyone's sensitivities.
Take for example, the use of the word "negasura" by local kids to refer to slingshots used to hunt small birds and animals in the past when killing the little animals was accepted and politically correct. It wasn't until much later that we realized that the word was an adaptation of a southern white insult to blacks that you didn't need a gun to kill one, and that a slingshot would do.
Not knowing that origin - and intent- of the word, we used it innocently and without any intent to hurt anyone. Once we learned its intent, we stopped using it.
Mexican Americans made the word "chicano" a badge of honor when it was used pejoratively toward them in the 1960s. And rural whites have done the same with "redneck." In the sign above, the bar is advertising the flour taco of fajitas and cheese at $4. We tried a gringa and it (not she) was delicious, and a bargain at that.
As Freud used to say when he was asked about his smoking a cigar, a phallus symbol in psychoanalysis: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."