theres an assumption above that racism is limited to mostly american - or europeans of white descent. And yet when I lived in Japan, on occassion I was refused service (gaijin dame! no- foreigners) sorry Japanese only. I had a Japanese girlfriend who moved here for a while and before coming to Canada she asked me if there was racism in Canada. While she lived here she worked in a Japanese grocery store here and one day as we were driving she pointed out a man and said "thats one of my customers" Hes quite nice for a Korean". I tried to explain that she was making a racist comment, she had certain views about Chinese people as well. She never realized that even though she was concerned about racism (from the whites) that she was doing the same thing. ANother point. When we happened to watch the movie TORA TORA TORA on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, halfway through the movie she said "you mean Japan started the war?" I guess they dont teach that at school. She was a lovely person and yet she was completely unaware that she was making sweeping assumptions on whole groups of people. I sometimes wonder if I do that and try to catch myself. In my line of business I deal with people of different ethnic backgrounds and have personally experienced that difficulty with people of East Indian or South Asian background. This not to say that its always the case but almost always when I am dealing with someone of that background they haggle and want you to do more than you quoted often after the job is in production and at the end they seek a further discount by trying to find flaws etc. This has happened enough times that I have red flags when such a customer comes in. I often add something to the quote to allow for the haggling etc. Some designers I know actually refuse to deal with them because of similar problems in the past. Of course Ive had many customers of East Indian background who were completely honest and easy to deal with although they were in a minority. And the number of deadbeat or difficult customers is certainly not limited to any race or background. Yet I still feel that its cultural, their way of doing business is different than ours. any thoughts or am I just trying to rationalize my own racism.