Hello Susaga! I'm going to repost a comment I made a few hours ago, in this instance:

"Things can undergo a transformation, just because the original usage might have been innocent. If something starts being used by white racists or western imperialists in a racist way, would ya look at that, it’s racist.

Also, it’s covert racism. It gives people plausible deniability. Like you are doing now.

And there are historical precedents of this kind of racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril"