[kstenerud]

Yeah, some people are genuinely racist, but the fact is that most aren't. What most people incorrectly call "racism" is actually culture fit issues.

When someone's culture is sufficiently different from yours, it becomes enough of an unknown to engender fear. And fear due to the unknown leads to paranoid thought, usually at the subconscious level.

For example, if you get a job candidate whose demeanor screams "from the hood", you'll definitely pass him/her over. The last thing you want is for them to start a fight over "respect", or bring some "friends" over to rob the place (deliberate hyperbole, yes, but this is how the subconscious works). Similarly, anyone who has had much contact with Indian culture will know that fraud and corruption are tolerated far more readily than they are in the West. This means that you need to be on your guard lest the person of that culture starts behaving as if in that culture. I've seen it happen enough times in my own experiences, so this is not just idle speculation. This is also why second gen people have a much easier time of it.

You may argue that you shouldn't "sell out" on your culture just to get ahead ("acting white", for example). I would argue that in remaining "true to your roots", you hobble yourself by deliberately refusing to make it easier for the majority to accept you.

I've lived on both sides of this issue. I've seen actually racist people, but far more often I've seen people who are afraid of the cultural divide, and move to protect themselves accordingly. I've also seen people change their own culture to better match the one of the majority, and they made FAR better lives for themselves than those who refused to do so.

Do racism and sexism exist? Of course they do. And in the rare cases where you DO encounter the real thing, it is your duty as a civilized person to put a stop to it. But when it's merely a culture issue, raising a stink about it will do nothing more than stir up resentment.

[kstenerud]

It's always telling when people downvote, yet have no rebuttal.

[JulianMiller520]

People don't like to argue with people they deem incapable of understanding the topic at hand. I hit your hyperbole and read no further because I deemed your take unintelligent and poorly argued. Hence #downvote

[kstenerud]

That's awfully rude. Which part was unintelligent and why? Which part was poorly argued and why?

[JulianMiller520]

It honestly wasn't meant to be rude but I thought most other people would also stop reading and dismiss it and it wouldn't be productive if you took that to mean you'd argued a great point and stumped the community. Your assertions stomp all over sensitive issues on all sides of the issue, you use race-related language that could be considered inflammatory. If your point was about cultural sensitivity on both sides of the divide then perhaps you could have started by showing some in your post. Hope that helps to clarify.

[kstenerud]

"Hope that helps to clarify."

Not really... I used some inflammatory language as an example of how paranoid thought would germinate as fear of an unknown brought someone to the extreme of the "what if". Kind of like how parents fears can grow into a near certainty that their child has been abducted by an axe murderer because he's an hour late coming home from school.

The rest of the post is about fitting in so that you don't trigger that fear response. In essence, comporting yourself in the same manner as is the standard in business in the area you find yourself in (i.e. no surprising behavior). I've made a habit of taking this approach, and it's worked quite well for me. I also know a number of others who refused to do this, and are now bitter over the rejection they suffered (sometimes to the level of violence, actually, which didn't help at all).