In my conversational Spanish class, the instructor gave us several aphorisms to translate. One seemed rather racist to me.
Más perdido que turco en niebla.
which means
More lost than a Turk in fog.
I questioned her whether this was racist, because it seemed that way to me. She tried to assure me that it was uncontroversial in Spanish (she is from Argentina, if that makes any difference).
She said, "Many people have no problem saying things like this."
I replied, "And other people might have no problem calling those people racists."
My feeling is that any saying that singles out a member of an ethnic or racial group is potentially racist and offensive. There's a reason people no longer say "There's the n***** in the woodpile" when declaring that they've found the source of a problem.
Is this kind of thing common and uncontroversial in Spanish-speaking countries? Am I being too sensitive?