<p>Azarietc - nope, she didn’t have bad taste in friends. My point was: this was pervasive. At Oxford. Amongst the brightest of the brightest. I “encounter” this sort of casual, unthinking racism when I read the Times restaurant review which refers to ‘Chink’ food. Do you live in England? Or the UK?! I don’t think A.A. Gill means to be racist. I do think he gets away with what in the US would be totally objectionable because there is nowhere near the level of awareness here as there is in the US - “PC” here is a totally negative term. Have you not read Antony Julius on the rise of ‘dinner party anti-semitism?’ He means people at civilized dinner parties make anti-Jewish comments and nobody calls them on it. My daughter did. And I do too . I wrote a letter to The Times (it wasn’t printed).</p>