I'm reminded of the story about the bunch of street kids planning the night's action.

"Yeah, well Tony's a Wop, and Spikes a Nigger, and I'm a Mick and Al's a Yid, and Jose is a Spic - but we're all Americans..." Cries of doubtful approval.

"So we've got to stick together when we go down to the parking lot and stomp those Arabs..."

You could change the names and the labels and the locality round if you like. But we were talking about West Side Story.

And I alsways thought the Jets were Italian. If I say all these New Yorkers tend to look and sound pretty well the same to me would that be racist? I think it's more of a compliment.