Racism, it seems to me, is often applied selectively, an active prejudice that is formed over time, using personal experiences and sometimes exposure to loudmouths.
You can be a raging racist and still participate and express respect for Others' cultures. It's a transitory thing, depends on your mood that day. Perhaps.
Being racist is not an absolute, right? Or is it, Once a racist, always a racist?
For example, I myself have respect and sometimes admiration for Mexicans (for their work ethic, from my personal experience working side-by-side in early life service industry), while also retaining a lifelong negative prejudice against Puerto Ricans (based, again, on personal, early life exposure to some bad apples).
I do not consider myself a racist, but I know I have prejudices and preferences that could offend some of my absolutist fellow citizens. I discriminate in my tolerances, enjoying those (sub)cultures that appeal to me, and turning away from those that rub me the wrong way (subwoofers and bass pounding noisemaking mofos).
But some haters just don't discriminate, and here is the problem facing our world. Someone, some entity, roused these rabble, stirred them up into a lather, turned them into intolerant hate machines.
It isn't racism that fuels their rage now, it is Other-ism. Anything other than the old and familiar is subject to backlash. So, Diwali can engage-the-rage because it reminds of all the other cultural intrusions and pollutions and dilutions and... You Will Not Replace Me! Christmas! Not Kwanzaa!
It is easy to rouse the rabble; difficult to rein in (or reign over) the rage. It is easy to tear stuff down; not so easy to build something better.
I hope our billionaire corporate overlords are learning a lesson from this...
