Things Went South [duplicate]

If things went south we better have some plan...

Is went south a racial term or it's okay to use it in normal conversation to refer if things went wrong?

Solution 1:

According to the OED, this meaning of ‘south’ comes originally from stock markets.

South on a map is obviously down at the bottom, and when stocks go downwards, towards the ‘south’, they devaluate; hence the expression ‘go south’.

There is no element whatsoever of it being a racial term. I can’t even imagine how ‘south’ would be racially loaded at all—if anything, ‘southern’ (in American English) is a culturally loaded term. Hardly a racially loaded one.