[beyelzu]

I admit that I can probably be overly sensitive towards veiled racism having grown up and spent almost all of my 35 years in the south, I consider the argument that the US has a different culture to be something of a dog whistle. I think that people often associate gun violence with gangs or minorities. I think the argument that there are cultural differences really means that we have 12 or 13 percent African Americans.

This is similar to the argument that "sure, we test lower in the US but we teach everybody and everybody gets to take the standardized tests, where other countries track people into manual trades at a younger age." This argument is combined with the understanding that persons of color belong in those trades and are bringing the test results down.

I don't think that everyone who makes the argument is a racist, I do think that they have internalized a racist argument.