My MIL is from Thailand and I've gotten the low down on every other Asian group. Dirty Laotians, criminal Cambodians...you get the picture.
It was quite eye opening to me as I grew up on a steady diet of NYS public education kumbaya, only whitey is racist.
But, I have learned a valuable tool. If I go into an Asian owned business, I find a way to sneak into the conversation that my kids are part Thai--I immediately get better treatment. (:
So what we have learned is that "Asians" are normal.
New Yorkers look down on New jersey.
Yorkshiremen on Lancastrians.
Parisians on everyone.
But, does it make them racist?
Yes, you are right, we (the western world) only seem to believe white people are racist, especially as the media and the schools ram it down are throats 24/7.
The bottom line is this mantra has gone on so long it has taken away form the bigger picture, and that is the west is self-destructing right in front of our eyes.
My wife is Singapore Chinese. She would add rude (Mainland) Chinese, arrogant and nasty Japanese, and that all Vietnamese - and half the Thais - are prostitutes. And don't even get her started on Indians. :)
On the plus side, she looks up to and respects Taiwanese as the true guardians of Chinese culture and she also has a lot of friends from both Hong Kong and China. She's not a racist - it's a cultural bias. Traditional Chinese think their culture is simply superior to all others...just like traditional Americans do.
In general - even though Han Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have no great love for each other, all them as lighter skinned Asians from more northerly latitudes look down on darker-skinned Asians from southerly latitudes, dismissing them as redneck farmers and low-class hookers.
But her experience with Chinese businesses, both here and overseas, is different from yours. She finds that if she speaks Mandarin at first she gets ignored or treated rudely - but if she addresses the staff in English they immediately bow and scrape and do everything they can to help her. There seems to be a certian self-loathing among many Chinese - especially from the Mainland. They think Westerners - and especially Americans - are superior people. Might be the legacy of Communism at work.