@Background Pony #37C6  
I haven’t played Skyrim so I can’t speak for race relations in the game. However, the “Hearth’s Warming Eve” episode established that in the bad old days, racism was alive and well in Equestria. And back then, Unicorns treated Earth ponies like inferiors and demanded tribute from them. Now, racism seems to be a non-issue in modern Equestria, but considering its history of race relations, it’s hard to see Trenderhoof’s comment being anything other than condescending toward Applejack’s species, the way his ancestors used to be toward hers.
 
Now, this could either be a case of the writers not realizing the Unfortunate Implications of the dialog, or them knowing what they were doing and Getting Crap Past the Radar. Either way, it’s not really an innocent comment.

@Background Pony #37C6  
…why was applejack offended by it, though?

Rest assured, it’s not. Especially in this case as they’re quite literally different races, he’s a unicorn and she’s an earth pony.  
Just as with people on both the individual and broader scale, acknowledging that we’re not all the same bares no similarity to attempting to use said differences as grounds for detriment.
 
lets look at this another context-appropriate way to complete the explanation - if these characters weren’t ponies, say it was all taking place in skyrim and applejack was big strong nord woman and trender was an urbane slender Altmer,…he sees her out picking apples and looses his shit. To make an innocuous comment of infatuation based on her being a nord carries no bigoted connotations, it’s little more than an attempt at dispelling any potential resentment based on the very real differences that exist between their races.
 
So yeah…I hope we can try to be a little more objective in the future.

@Background Pony #37C6  
Folks have been interpreting his bad pick-up line toward Applejack, “I really admire the work ethic of Earth ponies” as a sort of clueless racist remark. It kinda sorta is, if you think about it.

casual racist? bigot?…what the fuck?

@anonymouspegasus  
He was a bigot for sure, but the question is if he had the opportunity to learn better.

@anonymouspegasus  
I meant “an innocent bigot”.

It looks fluffy… I don’t care if he was an insensitive bigot, I still want to hug him.

Casual racists have never been so huggable!