Edit: Quickly searching I found this: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57376057/indias-love-a...
Money spent on home appliance is minimal and an after-thought, and this is because you cannot impress people with your home appliances while you're out of your home. Meanwhile you can flash your Gold iPhone everywhere you go and it implicitly shows everybody around you that you can afford a Gold iPhone.
Social posturing is a central part of East Asian cultures and the Gold iPhone appeals directly to that mindset. There is no racism but instead it's just the reality of the situation -- hubris is ingrained and prevalent.
"Look at me, I have so much income, I can afford to spend it frivolously!"
So far I have seen no data whatsoever to back up this idea that Asian people prefer gold more than other people in the world.
Articles like these simply take a racial stereotype and run with it to the conclusion they want to reach. That's racist.
What specifically in this article are you calling out as casually racist? Was Mr. Lian, who is quoted as saying "Chinese people like Gold" being racist about his own race? My wife has said much the same thing to me. She's Chinese, though now a naturalised Brit.
(1) I apologies to my esteemed HNers for that, but it seems appropriate and if I take a karma hit for it, so be it. It was worth it.
In fact, the article itself basically admits that the entire premise is full of shit:
"...gold in Asia is perhaps even more fetishized than in the West."
"Perhaps". This entire article, this entire kind of article, is based on a wild guess. Yet this doesn't stop everybody from running with the "Asians love gold!" theme.
Probably two thirds of the people in the iPhone line I was in wanted gold. Yet I don't see any articles saying "Americans love gold!"
Writing crazy and uninformed articles about faraway people while ignoring similar behavior at home? Yep, that's racist.
Is the article racist? Yes, a bit. Only long-term sales data will reliably tell us which colors are preferred in which markets. Right or wrong, the article is rushing to judgement based on flimsy racial stereotypes.
