Not quite the direction I was heading in. Keep in mind (when discussing racism, this seems to have to be pointed out repeatedly. Not necessarily you, Jerry, just in general) that not all bigoted comments are created equal. In other words, bigotry is not a zero sums game in which once a comment has achieved "bigotry" status it is officially equal to the most offensive rhetoric in existence. Rather, I'm really thinking that once you use a phrase in an angry manner that paints an entire race/ethnic/culture in a negative light, you really are part of the problem, as it were. It creates a racist undercurrent that allows much bigger and badder racism to climb onto its shoulders.
I've been reading about intellectualism in the twentieth century (The Modern Mind, by Peter Watson), and the current section of the book I'm at is detailing the shakers and the movers in Eastern Europe, many of whom were Jewish. The climate it paints is one of such an undercurrent of negative anti-semitism that it stunned me how small of a push was required of Hitler to take it to the next level. Now, I'm not Godwining this. "Jewing me down" is a million years away from the Holocaust. I'm only saying that using bigoted terms in a negative manner contributes to the groundwork that makes institutionalized racism possible.