I applaud your efforts at education!

I observe however that their is an emergent definition of 'racism' which is quite a bit more broad than yours.

Basically it is this "Assuming specific or stereotypical attributes about an an individual or group, based on that individual or group's membership in a definable group."

This removes the typical restriction that it involve 'race specific traits' so things like 'Bankers are greedy criminals' or 'Christians are fascists' get reflected back as variations on the 'racist' meme. When ever that group membership nominally includes race it's considered racist by people who share that racial attribute.

Even the discussion we're having (and as an operations guy I see a lot of bad actors whose IPs originate in countries that were former parts of the USSR) we have to be careful to disentangle accusations of people of a region being bad, and regions which host infrastructure which is available to everyone, being used for bad. The Internet does many things and one of those things is create 'telecommuting criminals' who may easily be living in New Hampshire but hosting their C&C servers at a friendly ISP or EC2 equivalent in the Ukraine.

[edit typos]

Good point re 'telecommuting criminals'.

I presume it is inherently and practically more difficult to investigate identity of someone renting servers in US vs Russia, Ukraine or China, in part because of language, legal system and political differences.

Race does refer geographic origin (among other things.) It does not include career or religion. I don't think that is related to what is being discussed at all.

Lots of racism emerges partially as a result of some statistical basis in current social or economic situations that for whatever reason correlate to an ethnic group or nation of origin. (And racism is not solely about ethnic groups, it's also about nations of origin -- ethnic groups are just one of the classifications of humans that are considered "race", geographic ancestry is another.)

It's not racism to recognize these statistical facts. Racism is when we have prejudice based on them. It's when we slander an entire ethnic group or nation of origin based on the actions of a few of them. This is not justified just because there is more cybercrime in Russia than elsewhere: there is cybercrime everywhere, and the vast majority of Russians are not cybercriminals.

It's racism to say we "run the risk of russians" when we mean we run the risk of malevolant cybercriminals. The two terms are not interchangeable. We don't say you "run the risk of blacks" when we mean you might get mugged in downtown LA even if we believe that more muggings in downtown LA come from blacks than other ethnic groups, nor do we say you "run the risk of whites" when we mean you might get killed by a serial killer as you're walking to your car in an empty garage at night, even if we think perpetrators of such crimes are more likely white than anything else.

I think it depends on what one attributes the statistical fact to; it's only racism if we consider it inherent to the group. If we consider that to be a result of a particular condition that happens to be affect certain group at this point in time, and that any other group would have the same problem if subject to the same condition, I don't see how is that racism.

I think your examples are clear prejudice (and no, I wouldn't say them), but they may or may not be racism.

I suppose I just don't see what would motivate someone to slander an entire group of people based on the actions of a few. If someone is worried about cybercrime, they should say so rather than substituting "Russian" as a synonym for cybercriminal. To me that implies that cybercrime is an inherently Russian activity. Perhaps I am too quick to read racism against Russians into such an inflammatory use of the word "Russian" due to the amount of racial discrimination I have seen against Russian users while working in the game industry, where it is not uncommon to dismiss Russian gamers as probably a pirate or probably a hacker and to refuse them a level of support that would be provided to a person with a different accent or last name.

(Repeated from my reply to something else)

The UN's definition of racial descrimination:

"the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."

I don't know what the US legal definition is (though I'm guessing it's the similar) but in the UK discrimination based on country of origin would count as racism.