People often use "racism" as a stand-in for all bigotry. You are correct that this technically isn't racist, but it is instead textbook xenophobia, so your comment is mostly just an annoying pedantic correction that doesn't actually address the underlying point being made about the bigotry of the original statement.
> it is instead textbook xenophobia, so your comment is mostly just an annoying pedantic correction
We're in the midst of a backlash to reducing the word racism to a banal definition. Let's learn from it.
Karp's statement is xenophobic, jingoistic and bigoted. It's worded to not offend racists, because we have a lot of them in government right now. But it's not racist per se, and will be found agreeable by many non-racists in a non-racist way.
Quite honestly I do not care about the feelings of anyone who self-identifies as xenophobic and is offended at being called racist or vice versa. Bigotry is bigotry and bigotry of any form shouldn't be tolerated, excused, or empowered.
