[9]There is such close identification between poverty, race, slums and marginalization in Argentina that philosopher José Pablo Feinmann compares these circumstances with the "Muslim question" in France.
In the 1980s a famous television sketch called El groncho y la dama was made as part of the show Matrimonios y algo más featuring Cristina del Valle and Hugo Arana.
The sketch was a satirical look at a marriage between a working-class mechanic and an upper-class lady who referred to her husband as the groncho (in the sense of "vulgar person", not properly a racist slur) while seduced by his sexual skills.
It is used to disparage a somewhat nebulous sector of society associated with people that have black hair and medium-dark skin, generally of mestizo (mixed European and Indigenous) origin, belonging to the working class.
The Argentine author Germán Rozenmacher (1936–1971) wrote a well-known short story in 1961 titled: "Cabecita negra" which depicted everyday racism in Argentina with stark reality.
The plot deals with a mid-class citizen of European ancestry, who resents the increasing internal migration of impoverished people from northern Argentina to Buenos Aires.
Not so much to defend against the negros who had now sprawled out in his own house, but rather to confront all that has neither feet nor head and to feel companionship with a fellow human being, another civilized person.
The word is also used by some groups of young people to refer to someone who is viewed as undesirable, badly dressed, unpleasant; someone who falls outside of what is considered to be the "correct" style.
The historical term malón, which describes the Mapuche mounted raids on colonial and Argentine settlements to plunder cattle and supplies from the 17th to the 19th century, is sometimes used in colloquial speech in the figurative, derogatory sense of "horde".
Although today it is known that biologically there is no such thing as a pure person, and various researchers have recycled the term to refer to any exchange of DNA,[25] and various other experts assert that all peoples and races are the result of prior mixing of races,[26] during the Spanish colonization of the Americas the idea was imposed that mestizo should be applied only to those persons of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, in order to demarcate their difference from the pure people who were generally of European ancestry.
The racist colonial concept of mestizaje to some extent endures to this day, as witnessed by the recent debate about the racial origin of José de San Martín, one of the founders of Argentina.
Commenting on this phenomenon, historian Hugo Chumbita asserted that "there has been and continues to be resistance to revising official history due to the idea that by corroborating the mixed racial origin of San Martín, then Argentina's image would be tarnished.
"[27] In a similar vein, an Argentine newspaper reported that conservatives voices were complaining: "If the founding father is a mestizo bastard, then so is Argentina.
[31] In addition, this ideology holds forth that cultural influences from other communities such as the Aborigines, Africans, fellow Latin-Americans, or Asians are not relevant and even undesirable.
Article 25: The Federal Government will encourage European immigration; and will not restrict, limit, nor tax the entry of any foreigner into the territory of Argentina who comes with the goal of working the land, bettering industry, or introducing or teaching sciences or the arts.
Alberdi, the article's sponsor and the father of the Argentine Constitution of 1853, explained in his own words the basis for White-European discrimination: If you were to put the roto (literally "broken"), the gaucho, the cholo, the basic element of our popular masses, through the finest educational system; in one hundred years you would not make him an English worker who works, consumes, and lives comfortably and in a dignified manner.
Alberdi, who was a proponent of French being the national language of Argentina, believed that Latino and Christian traditions were enemies of progress and supported discrimination against Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigration.
In a letter sent July 13, 1937, on the eve of the Nazi invasion, the consul wrote: I am of the opinion that it would be preferable to prevent Jewish immigration to Argentina.
[41] Ramon Camps, the Chief of Police in Buenos Aires, who allegedly kidnapped and tortured Jacobo Timerman, claimed that Zionists were enemies of Argentina and had a plan to destroy the country.
A prime example of this occurs regularly at the Atlanta association football club located in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, a district that has a significant Jewish population.
For several years now the fans of opposing teams root for their clubs by waving Nazi flags and throwing soaps onto the playing field.
[45][circular reference][46] Another incident was the racially motivated murder of Marcelina Meneses and her ten-month-old son Josua Torrez who were pushed under a moving train near the Avellaneda station on July 10, 2001.
[47] The current Argentine population reflects the former immigration policy conducted by the government in the 19th and 20th century only partially, considering that Italians and Spaniards were not intended to predominate as they do.