I agree with Al, it's definitely an "uptight" barometer.  I figure when I use it, I help others who are trying too hard to be "politically correct" to relax a little.  If we can't get past the word, then how do we deal with the real issues of cross-cultural dissonance?  Face it, Mexicans use it among themselves all the time.  Why put myself in a position where I am required to react with fear or indignation or whatever, every time I hear it?

One of the things I have learned in 11 years in Mexico is that nobody means ME when they say "Yankee go home".  I've gone into too many anti-U.S. demonstrations, and asked people what's happening, and been treated with friendship and respect, to take umbrage at that one.  Anyhow, almost all the time, they are right: the Yankee (government) should go home, and stop messing up the local scene.  Let's start with Iraq.

I would hate to be called a Yankee.  To me, that word is associated with aggression, self-rightiousness and undeserved attitudess of superiority.  As in, the Yankee dollar, and the Yankee gunboats off Veracruz.

Gringo, on the other hand, has a sort of soft, innocent, goofy silliness about it.  To my ear, it fits a lot of behaviors, mine and others'.

I hate it when U.S. citizens call themselves Americans.  Every country south of the Rio Bravo is part of America, and we have no right to abrogate the word as a description of persons from the country between Mexico and Canada.

On the other hand, substituting the more politically correct "Citizen of the U.S.A." is a little awkward; it breaks the flow of what might otherwise be sparkling prose.  Gringo only uses up two syllables.  Much smoother, no?

Guillermo Gomez Peña describes himself as a Mexican in the process of becoming a Chicano. I like to think of myself as a gringo hoping to someday be a mensch.