I'm sure those are fine examples of racism. I guess I'm thinking about three things here.
1. How strong is the correlation between the examples and the racism attributable to the average Italian - the people we would ordinarily encounter if we chose to live in Italy? After all, we can probably find examples of racism in other countries, yet we have singled out Italy here in this thread.
Maybe I misread sys, but I found much of what he was saying to be reminiscent of things I've heard from European people who have essentially told me, "Hey, look. We don't care about the same things you do. We don't understand why you make such a big fuss over this stuff." This led me to earlier wonder about a couple of things.
2. Maybe the wrongness of casual acceptance of certain sorts of racism by the average Italian just isn't as absolute as the wrongness of, say, cold blooded murder.
3. Or maybe it is, but maybe there are cases (similar in kind to the black cat example) in which people with different backgrounds view the same sets of circumstances from different perspectives and, consequently, make different judgments about them.
I'm not arguing one way or another here, but I do believe these things are worth considering - especially given our perceived tendency as Americans to be a bit egocentric.