May i ask a question?

Bang on, vamp.

If Pakistani people find the term offensive, then it is. It is used in a derogatory way by racist thugs. I don't know where Poppy1 has been for the last twenty years, possibly in France, but it is certainly not an acceptable term in England (or on this forum).
I chose an Irish name by deed poll and I am quite happy to laugh at Irish jokes but I have not been subjected to racist abuse.
I am glad African Americans are proud to be black - how different from some Asian races where people pay small fortunes to get their skin whitened. Some adverts for spouses specify that they must be pale skinned.

bluebell, actually sometimes it's true – the taking of offence being the taker's problem rather than the other person's, especially if it is obvious from context that offence is not intended. I think is possible to be too sensitive to flippant or careless remarks.

My dad always told us: "It is a greater sin to take offence where none is intended than to give offence." I think he was right.

Bluebell - our posts crossed.

Bags - completely disagree - that excuses thoughtless people from taking responsibility for their own crassness

I've said before that the Pakistani family that ran a shop where I lived in Oxfordshire called it "The Paki Shop" so clearly not all people of Pakistani origin find the abbreviation offensive.

Bags - it's also the excuse that people use - I didn't mean, I'm not a racist/ sexist etc, can't you take a joke etc etc

Bags - it's to wrong foot the person you have just offended and make them look in the wrong

I'm not talking about actual crassness, bluebell, just unclear areas, e.g. where the same word or phrase is used in different ways in different areas so is open to 'misuse' in some contexts but not others.

Also, if someone genuinely is crass, you can tell them so without being offended. I do.

But Bags many do so it's best avoided

It doesn't have to be all Pakistani people who find it offensive- it seems to me that the family who ran that shop may have been trying to draw the sting out of the word.

I think perhaps we are not quite talking about the same thing, bluebell.

I would never deliberately offend someone but that's not to say someone might not take offence at something I say.

Either take the sting out or acknowledge that they felt no sting.

Bags - you're finessing now when I think Moved's comments had no such component

The problem is that what is offensive and what isn't is a minefield and it's very easy to "go wrong" without ever meaning to.

I do finesse about meaning. I think it matters.

I think the majority of Pakistani people would find the term offensive, and no finessing of language is going to persuade me otherwise.

I agree, and that's why I don't use the term. But in general in my book if an expression isn't used offensively then it isn't offensive. Context matters.

And, in general (I'm not talking about a particular case), I agree with the remark that sometimes it is the person taking offence who has the problem. It simply is true that some people are more offendable than others. That has nothing to do with racism either. It's a general observation with no skin colour or country of origin boundaries. That is all I was saying.

I can't think of any circumstances in which the term would not be offensive, whatever the intention of the person using it.

Nobody has to agree but I don't accept that that's an unreasonable thing to say.

greatnan, I said I was not talking about the term "Paki"!

Sorry, I misunderstood. Crossing posts. But anyway, the people in the local shop I spoke about weren't offended when they used it themselves so circumstances do exist even if you can't think of any.

And besides all this there is the situation we were discussing earlier in which I objected to a term you used, for good reasons, but wasn't at all "offended" by it. I think the term "offended" is overused to be honest.

I'm afraid I can't follow the finer points of this discussion but I can support Bags assertion that sometimes Pakistani people refer to themselves by the unmentionable term.
There was a shop across the road from my practice owned by a large Pakistani family, and certainly the younger male family members used it, perhaps with a touch of irony but always in a good-humoured way.