[wildmusings]

There's nothing racist about acknowledging cultural differences, or even making claims of superiority of one culture over another. Racism is judging individual people based on their race instead of more substantive criteria, like culture, values, and actions.

[oliwarner]

"Acknowledging cultural differences" is a too broad a thing to just okay like that. People tend to go over the top. Americans are fat and arrogant, Mexicans are lazy, the Spanish are dirty, and the Irish are drunks.

It's very easy to say that China —the country— has a problem with intellectual property, but tarring all ethnically-Chinese people with that brush affects hires and promotions in our own countries.

Respecting IP ownership is as much a learned skill as learning to say exactly what you mean when you're accusing a country's governments, police and courts of actively turning a blind eye to IP abuse.

[wildmusings]

Sometimes generalizations about whole groups are true about many or most members of those groups. But even though many or most stereotypes are rooted in some truth, that's doesn't mean we should judge individual people according to those stereotypes. Somehow treating individuals fairly has morphed into this idea that we should ignore reality. That's just silly.

[oliwarner]

I'm suggesting the opposite of ignoring reality. Be extra-specific and say what you mean.

My statement was lazy and could easily read as "Chinese people don't care about IP". You can choose to believe that nothing you say affects anybody else, but enough people parroting the same nonsense has a powerful effect.