In my country, we are incredibly racist and xenophobic. It is common practice to call denigrating names to:
Indigenous peoples.
Black people.
LGBT community.
People from other geographical regions of the country.
Foreigners from certain countries (mostly those perceived as troublesome like Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, PerĂº, Haiti).
So, whenever you want to insult someone you usually pick one of the terms used to referrer to the indigenous people. The other insults are kind of exclusive. And all of them are based on stereotypes.
I think that it is because of our colonial past that this kind of behavior is not frown upon when someone sees it. You hear it at the stadium during soccer games, you see it in social media platforms, graffiti. It is everywhere! I see the U.S. as more civilized in certain ways, again, because the history behind the civil rights movement. I have been to basketball and baseball games and pretty much everyone behaves. If I were to transpose to my country, let’s say an NBA game, and LeBron James had a lousy night, you would not believe the amount of abuse that player would receive. And that kind of abuse is something I have witnessed in world cup qualifying games…
It is something that I have been ashamed of more than once. That’s why whenever friends come to visit I always pretend that attending soccer games is not worth it.