> Now you could argue that this can be important culturally, such as religious rules for different sexes, but then the reasoning becomes completely circular.
Not really. People seem to confuse what is with what ought. Those are two completely different matters.
OP wrote "People like Japanese or Chinese are trained in working in groups with disrespect for the individual.", and he was challenged for the "People like Japanese or Chinese" part. You may believe that such differences ought not exist, or we ought not to have to use such categories, but the OP's statement was about what is, about the state of reality. You may agree or disagree with OP's statement, but at no point should considerations of "political correctness" enter such argument.
In Japan, there are large numbers of people who isolate themselves and do not interact with society, and in many Chinese cities, there is an extremely competitive capitalist environment. And the idea that Japanese and Chinese people value the state over the individual to a significantly greater degree than in the US or Europe would seem to ignore the almost religious fervor of US patriotism and the history of the European wars. Sure, you can find measurable differences, but measurability in and of itself is not a sign of significance.
If you are concerned with what is, then relying on orientalist generalisations that were originally applied to people in Egypt by the French, before being reapplied to the Chinese and Japanese when the concept of the orient was moved east, are probably not going to give you an accurate picture.
> Sure, you can find measurable differences, but measurability in and of itself is not a sign of significance.
I agree. The question now becomes whether in this particular case those measurable differences are in any way significant. Stereotypes are sometimes true in a statistical sense. Anyway, I don't have any data to answer this question; I was only trying to point out asserting probable cultural differences may be wrong in a factual sense, but it shouldn't automatically be treated wrong in a moral sense.
> relying on orientalist generalisations that were originally applied to people in Egypt by the French, before being reapplied to the Chinese and Japanese when the concept of the orient was moved east
I haven't thought about that (thanks to my rather small knowledge about the evolution of cultural stereotypes). Thank you for this insight, I'll keep it in mind.
As far as a historical look at cultural stereotyping goes, Edward Said's book 'Orientalism' is not a bad starting point. From reading it I became far more aware that the way that a culture is described is usually far more to do with the culture that is doing the describing.
edit - A good example being the British tabloid view of Japanese animation. If you were to trust the UK press, then Anime is all about sex and violence. However about half of Japanese tv is animation, and most of it is pretty innocent, but what the British buy is all the sex and violence, so then we think that is what Anime is.
> Now you could argue that this can be important culturally, such as religious rules for different sexes, but then the reasoning becomes completely circular.
Not really. People seem to confuse what is with what ought. Those are two completely different matters.
OP wrote "People like Japanese or Chinese are trained in working in groups with disrespect for the individual.", and he was challenged for the "People like Japanese or Chinese" part. You may believe that such differences ought not exist, or we ought not to have to use such categories, but the OP's statement was about what is, about the state of reality. You may agree or disagree with OP's statement, but at no point should considerations of "political correctness" enter such argument.