randomness

i started with the idea that you can't identify a racist by listening for claims like "those people are barbarians," but rather by listening for "my people are not barbarians." because if you belong to the one true culture, then your culture has the right to subvert the will of other cultures and the people therein. hence colonization, slavery, religious crusades, Starbucks in every country.

then I thought a little about it and concluded that this is a subcategory of people who fetishize nations. Nationalists usually fetishize their own nation, but I've seen people fetishize other nations as well. "Japan has everything figured out, I'm going to move there and teach English and it'll be bliss."

there are two extreme cases, both of which claim to be egalitarian. There's the cynical one: "all cultures are garbage, even the ones that claim to do great things", which seems to be where all the "equal opportunity offender" types come from. And there's the mythical Moral Relativist position: "All cultures are beautiful and gorgeous and valid, even the ones that commit atrocities and crimes against humanity." I haven't met these Moral Relativists but right-wingers seem to see them behind every bush.

this reveals that this equation has two axes: scope, and respect.

I resign instead that all cultures are themselves, that no single one has things so down-pat and figured out that they have the right to subjugate any other one...

i don't really have a conclusion to tie all this together, but someone has probably done the work. this sounds vaguely like Sam Harris material