Supernova wrote . . .
"Racism is no longer about race (skin color) but culture. People are Othered and discriminated against not (simply) because of the color of their skin (or other phenotypes) but because of their beliefs and practices associated with some "imagined culture."
Cultural racism, therefore, happens when certain people perceive their beliefs and customs as being culturally superior to the beliefs and customs of other groups of people."
We discriminate every day with regard to the behavior of people and their values and ideals and beliefs. Our prisons are full of such people who rob or rape or cheat and defraud and think it's quite ok to do so. Our prisons contain people who have murdered or assaulted others.
I quite happily discriminate against such people who are so antisocial as to pose a danger to the rest of us if left free to act out their particular cultural beliefs of crime and violence.
There's nothing wrong with calling out any particular culture and criticising it if it itself teaches that discrimination is ok or that violence towards others who differ in their beliefs is ok or say, for example, teaching that women are to be regarded as second class citizens, just because they are women.
I think I can happily call out a culture which refuses my right to choose my own religion and to freely swap and change it at my own free will.
I can happily call out and criticise an outlaw motorcycle gang culture which practises extortion and violence and the selling of dangerous, addictive health-destroying drugs.
I can quite happily criticise any culture or cultural system which espouses ideas which are contrary to those held dear and sacred by the Siècle des Lumières (Century of Enlightenment)
That's my cultural belief and I'm sticking to it. all cultures are not equal and nor do all cultures deserve equal regard. Some cultures are admirable and some are outright execrable.
So if I'm a cultural "racist" then so be it. I'm not going to go about making excuses for "cultures" which teach that, for example, misogyny or violence or religious intolerance is ok. I'm not going to be all touchy feely and culturally tolerant of another culture which insists that the only law of the land should be a religious law and not a civil law system.
I don't care what people look like or about what thoughts and beliefs they hold in their heads, just so long as those beliefs and cultural ideas don't get acted out so as to deliver violence and compulsion and misogyny on those who value their own particular cultural difference.
I don't care what people believe; I care about how they behave in our poor attempt at a truly egalitarian and civilised society.
