toto wrote:

Perhaps, perhaps not. We cannot tell what was in the person's
mind, but the double entendre is there if one knows that black
people were called coons at one time in this country and that
this derived from the raccoon that black and tans are used to
hunt.

Thank you, yes, that is exactly what was on my mind. I will grant you,
though, that not everyone is as educated about the deplorable history you
related as you and I are. In fact, in may just live on as a bit of a
cutesy double entendre now. But I wince when I hear someone joking about
coon hunting.

I live in an area with a significant Hispanic immigrant population. They
are "tan". My guess is that they encounter more racism in my area than
blacks do.

75 years ago in my area two Italian immigrants named Sacco and Vanzetti
were persecuted and executed for a crime they quite obviously did not
commit because they were tan.

I heard someone mention that I was being overly politically correct. I
would counter that by saying that I'm overly educated in what impolitic
things people do when they aren't behaving themselves.

Wendy