There must be another long thread on this song as I remember posting references to the original mid-19th century piece 'The Chinaman with the Monkey Nose'.

Yes it is/was racist but I don't see anyone here advocating we should sing it nowadays. It was sung to us by our parents/grandparents 2 generations ago and earlier in an era that saw little wrong in poking fun at other races. However it was a period when most races actively sought to kill each other. Humour/poking fun helped to dispel the genuine fears we all had of foreigners. The world thankfully is a much smaller place today although we still actively seek to murder foreigners and there are still too many people around who think that one race is somehow superior to another.