Why don't the Japanese differentiate more between foreigners ?

[Maciamo]

Mike, it seems that you have deeply ingrained dislike for classifying people around the world by criteria. It looks like you assimilate 'racism' and 'classification', even when the classification has nothing to do with the race (e.g. culture, nationality, language, social class...).

Furthermore, you visibly do not understand the difference between elitism and snobbery.

A snob, guilty of snobbery or snobbism, is a person who imitates the manners, adopts the world-view and affects the lifestyle of a social class of people to which that person does not by right belong.

vs

Elitism is a belief or attitude that an elite ― a selected group of persons whose personal abilities, specialized training or other attributes place them at the top of any field

Elitism is very close to Meritocracy

Meritocracy is strictly speaking a system of government based on rule by ability (merit) rather than by wealth or social position.

As for where I stand in this regard, I dislike snobbery (as I explained in the thread Do you care about social classes ? - see my discussion with Pachipro, esp. from #43), but I am not opposed to elitism or meritocracy, as I believe that capable people are more likely to rule a country well than incapable ones. The real issue is not about merit/abilities, but values and morals of those leaders. Many people confuse both issues, because powerful people all too often become corrupted or too self-conscious. So, I am in favour of people who are both capable (elite) and really care about the country and its people.

But I am not quite sure why you raised the issues of elitism and snobbery in this thread (e.g. your first reply to me).

This thread is about understanding that people in the world are fundamentally different based on their culture and social class (in fact, there is such a thing as "social class culture", and everyone who is not an hermit belongs to one whether they want it or not). I have never said that people should discriminate against such or such cultural or social group. I just intensely dislike people who cannot even acknowledge those fundamental socio-cultural differences and pu everyone in the same bag, for the better or for the worse.