The word doesn't bother me at all.

In fact, I find it highly entertaining to watch North Americans or Europeans get all offended by it when it is used.

In Mexico (where it generally refers to someone from the U.S.), there is, as in many lands, a kind of "hazing" process in which a new visitor to the land is tested to see, well, how uptight or not he is. Mexicans know that some Europeans really hate being called a "gringo" because they think of themselves as "better than" their North American counterparts (a concept that causes hilarity in a land conquered by the Spaniards, and which drove out the French at the point of a gun). Seeing whether someone is bothered by being called "gringo" is kind of a litmus test of character, or openness, of whether the visitor takes himself too seriously.

More often, I get called "gringo" by visiting Spaniards (who think they are somehow better than North American gringos). That also makes me - and many Mexicans - laugh aloud.

Further enriching the exploration of the G-word is that most visitors to any land from other lands, especially on the tourist circuits, are rich kids, spoiled, uptight, fearful, and fun to provoke. (For example, Mexicans and Latin Americans don't see too many black gringos backpacking through their lands: it's the economy, stupid!)

Anyway, the word "gringo" has nothing to do with race, or with nationality.

Here's an interesting essay about the etymology (linguistic roots) of the word "gringo," which originated with what 18th century Spaniards called foreigners: "griegos," or Greeks!

The writer explains:

According to Father Charles E. Ronan, in the Spanish historian, (in) Terrenos y Pando's Diccionario, compiled in the late 1700s, the term is described in the following fashion:

"Gringo in Malaga, [is] what they call foreigners who [have] a certain kind of accent which prevents their speaking Spanish with ease and spontaneity; in Madrid the case is the same, and for some reason, especially with respect to the Irish." Apparently in use throughout Ibero-America by the beginning of the 19th century, the true etymological roots of "gringo" may perhaps be found in the Spanish "griego", or Greek. All that can be said, then, is that the term probably originally applied to funny-looking itinerant speakers of an exceptionally unintelligible language....

In Brazil, a "gringo" is anyone from outside, including other Latin Americans:

The Rio daily newspaper O Povo recently ran a front page item detailing an attempted mugging of an American by three Ecuadorians in Tom Jobim airport. The headline? "Gringo rouba gringo" ("Gringos steal from gringo").

In the end, "gringo" (or its feminine "gringa") has evolved into a term similar to the indigenous Tzotzil word Cachlan, that is, anybody who is not from "here," wherever here is.

So if the gringos want to complain about being called gringos, they can continue supplying the rest of us (including this gringo) with some fine entertainment.

And if the Europeans don't want to be called "gringos" because they are not from the United States, well, to me it indicates a superiority complex... and as I often say... Every Groucho Marx needs a Mrs. Teasdale!