[quote=davelj]You’re probably not a racist, but rather what I refer to as a “culturist” (I made this up). A thought experiment…
You have two applicants. One is a college-educated black guy with a job as an engineer; good credit, etc. The other is a high school-educated white guy that works construction with a few dings on his credit report.
If you’re a white collar – for lack of a better way of putting it – dude, you’re probably going to pick the black dude to rent to, all else being equal. Why? Because he’s probably the closer of the two to you in terms of culture, or how you view the world.
So, I doubt it’s a racial issue so much as a cultural issue (but since I don’t know you I could be wrong). Now… this is where some folks jump up and down and say, “Discriminating on the basis of culture is just veiled racism!” To which I’d respond (as EconProf pointed out), “Talk to Jesse Jackson about that and then get back to me.”
The bottom line is that we all discriminate to some degree on the basis of culture – we like to hang with folks that share a similar value system, and I think this goes well beyond race.[/quote]
Bingo. I have also used the terms “culturalism” and “culturalist” when discussing this with other people.
