That is not nice :P J/k

I don't see how "Brits" is offensive.  But You guys can Call Me Aussie :D  and my comrades say oi oi oi !!!   

i emphatically disagree.  raising the awareness is absolutely crucial.  this is how countries like US and Canada deal with these issues, unlike so many European nations that like to sweep these kind of things under the rug.

whether a person is using a word knowingly or unknowingly, once that person knows there's it's a racial slur, that person should stop using it out of respect, and not say "i'm not using it as a racial slur".

although i haven't noticed "Jap" being used in a racial way in this forum.  i myself didn't even notice.  but since somebody thinks it's important enough to make a thread just stop using it.  it's good education.

Seriously - its like referring to Southeast Asia as the chink market. My point is not that people are not intending for it to be a racial slur, but its hard for a racial slur to not be a racial slur, regardless of your intention.

Last time this had brought up on a forum I went to, it turned ugly to the point where the user in question that had used the word (and didn't know it was offensive) had been harassed. The situation had been blown out of proportion.

Uh, you can call me a Kraut all you want and I wont be running to mommy crying (i.e. telling our beloved and allmighty overlords, the mods about it).

Any other German disagrees? Feels insulted?

But seriously: if anyone feels insultes, maybe not best to use a term. but then we in europe arent living our political correctness as much as in the US

Well as a reference, that is just as bad. Most racism (insert -ism of bias) is about ignorance. The point of this is to correct that ignorance.

Seriously -anese. Its not that hard. Its not that hard to not say racist things.

 Off topic: So why is hate speech explicitely banned in so much of Europe?

canada does the best job in these kind of education. america does a reasonable job. europe in general does a horrible job.

in general, the more multi-ethnic the population makeup is, the better that country does in terms of this kind of education.

i don't know about the situation in australia and new zealand? i heard it's just as bad there as in england.

The word, Jap, is a bit offensive to me as Japanese.

I understand the majority of people here do not use it with bad intentions so I usually tried to ignore it, but truth is it's not pleasant. To me, it's no different from saying chink to chinese or frog to french peopole, and the existence of people using it without the real knowledge of the term doesn't really make it OK.

Some Japanese people who have no knowledge of English sometimes use the term occasionally, but that's not very common. Some Japanese use it to make parody out of something, just like black comedians sometimes call themselves niggers in comedy routines. But these are also not a common usage.

Since the majority in the society continue to regard the term in a derogatory way (you won't see a word like "Jap" in New York Times) and because there still are racists who are happy to see/use the term, and because Japanese people who have some knowledge of English take it as offensive, there really is no need to insist on using the spicific term. If abbreviations are needed, I believe "JP", "JPN", or simply "J" are good to use.

 I would disagree it being the same. Could be taken similar. "Chink" is not really a direct abbreviation of the actual name of a group. "Jap" is a direct abbreviation of "Japanese." In my experiences, "Chink" like some racial slurs are primarily used by people (at least my generation in the USA) in the group that the name is supposed to represent. I personally do not use it in my speaking (other than quotes), but a direct abbreviation does seem reasonable to have its meaning changed to no longer being a slur. This discussion could make an interesting thing to ask various Japanese people while I study there.

Edit: As it took me awhile to finish writing my post, yeah, I've seen others such as Jpn used. I am trying to take a linguistics point of view of it in that languages change and evolve, so the meaning can change, and I think it would be good if it was removed from meaning something derogatory.