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You know, that's simply wrong. Racism, with the word "race" as a base word, is believing that certain races are superior or inferior simply as a matter of race.
(And I do believe that; for instance, I believe that African people make for a far superior selection of cornerbacks, due to a long history of having developed the type of musculature needed for sprinting... for whatever reason. And I believe the predominance of African-Americans as NFL cornerbacks is not racism, but a very strong nationwide process of selecting top-quality cornerbacks.)
But cultures are dramatically different. Human nature and personality may be similar, but the schools of thought that have developed through the interaction of individuals are much, much different.
We don't understand that in our society because we are taught that cultural differences are simply speaking different languages and eating different food. We assume that everyone uses the same moral codes, perspective, etc. But they don't.
Nic, I'm sorry, but this gets deeper the more I think about it. In honor-shame culture, collective thought is kinda welcomed!
And we can't see the products of our collective thinking because they are so deeply ingrained in us.
It would be racism if I were to say that if you took a one-year-old Arab and placed him in a guilt-culture western family, he would eventually fall into the same patterns as most fellow Arabs. I don't believe that (and the honor-shame culture isn't found solely in the Arab world anyway).
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