Ummmmmmm....... Isn't it interesting that the whole paradigm of the thread appears to be based on narrow subsets of only two of the world's flavors?
One frame of reference I needed to learn about quick, once, was the stuff that goes on between peoples often lumped together as "Hispanics." In planning outreach for a Spanish-language mass in the Chicago area, friends were quick to inform us that we would need to know how to avoid giving not only GENERAL offense to the people we perceived as one group, but PARTICULAR offense to the many, MANY peoples lumped into that group-- peoples who don't get usually along with the other folks they're lumped with, and whose individual cultures and histories with one another and with dominant/conquering groups are vastly different.
Hopefully, people can learn to generalize underlying principles of respect, as opposed to memorizing sets of rules specific to each group. :~) That's part of what I meant in my earlier post, "flexible thinking."
We need to THINK, and let our behavior reflect that.... otherwise it's too easy to perpetuate racism inadvertently, by assuming and communicating, "Noticing that your skin is darker than mine, I'm assuming you're African American, and so therefore you expect me to xxxx."
I think most of us don't want to exchange rigid, negative stereotypes for rigid rules of behavior based on others' assumed heritage....