Q: Is it Racism or Stereotyping when unfairly judging a culture? I was recently in a debate about unfair judgement of a culture by what it produces. the examples were


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*Because something looks Arabic it's Muslim and is Terrorist Material (because of ISIS)

*Because something looks Japanese it's pornographic (because of Hentai)

*Because something looks German it's represents Nazism (because if the Nazis)


I debated these are just very unfair stereotyping by most likely exaggerating one example however the person I was having the debate with said that it was actually racism as the categorization of something from a culture as something bad is making that culture and to the extent it's people inferior. ie,


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*All Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists

*The Japanese can only make pornographic things and are all perverts

*The Germans still hold onto their Nazi history and thus are Nazis


Seeing it like this it sorta looks like racism to me. So is it Racism or Stereotyping when unfairly judging a culture like this?

A: Stereotyping is a form of pre-judging a person based upon a common action or characteristic of other individuals of that same race.  While it may be accurate for some, it does not define an entire race (e.g. all blacks are great basketball players, criminals, violent, etc.)  The "pre-judging" action is the basis of what we define as "prejudice."  
Racism is the act of using any type of power (e.g. hiring, legislative, mass communications, law enforcement, conducting business, teaching, etc.) that one may possess to take actions against or not in favor of a particular group based upon racial prejudices that the holder of power may hold. (e.g. targeted police brutality, predatory lending/redlining, voting restrictions, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, etc.).  While this is a limited list of examples, the actions of racists can be expanded to many other ideas and activities.  The core definition of racism is "power through prejudices."
