I would agree with what the Guest who posted at 8:27 this AM said about culture being used as a euphemism for race, class, ethnicity etc. However, I would disagree somewhat about the distinctions being made just by dominant groups to differentiate themselves from supposedly subordinate ones. The tendancy to divide the world into "us" and "them" is pretty universal, and can be seen in virtally all walks of life and on every scale, from playground cliques to neighborhood rivalries and on up to full fledged ethnic and religious warfare. And the tendancy for that division works at all levels of the social and economic scale.