Defenders of Cultural Norms Unite!

One wonders how much things like enforcers of fascist xenophobia insisting that paying customers(somehow, I suspect only latino or asian looking people, or people with really strong accents) "show their papers" or whatever the fuck they want certain people to do (can you imagine the lines if they applied this rationale to *everyone* they didn't know personally?) is from the indoctrination of an awful culture, how much is from some people just being misbegotten jerks, and how much from the two reinforcing each other?

I mean, you can hold stupid, ignorant, bigoted beliefs without being a big jerk. You can subscribe to an absolutely saintly set of enlightened tenets (or at least claim to) and still be horribly cruel in how you treat others. (I have known plenty of folks who fall into both these categories.) Did the store clerk who wanted to see proof of citizenship or a green card or a passport or god/dess/other knows what take advantage of a nasty cultural trend to go ballistic on the Costa Rican family, because they just get off on harassing people and this gave them a handy excuse, or were they basically a decent person who had just been convinced that everyone who fell into the wrong category of "other" was dispossessed of feelings, or a walking malignancy whose feelings didn't matter because of the sheer evil they were perpetrating by having an accent and skin tone that were atypical for the location? (you can't say they *knew* the person was there illegally, as I doubt they were psychic, so they'd have to, on some instinctual level, feel this person warranted bad treatment simply by who they were, as random southern-accented white people are not being subjected to this sort of thing; or, I suppose, think illegal immigrants posed such a greater threat than all homegrown terrorists, murderers, rapists and bullies that TSA checkpoints needed to be set up at every check-out counter).

So, how much of one and how much of the other?

On a related note, I strongly recommend the "Red Riding" series of movies, in which Game of Thrones fans will see Sean Bean as a whole different kind of "King of the North." Sort of a British film noir, in which Yorkshire somewhat reminds me of where I grew up, except a lot bleaker and less welcoming and minus the good points. But the bad points? Amazingly similar.