Cultural awareness, what?

I've deleted my last three or four posts before they made it all the way to the web, because I've been reading a lot of sort of cultural awareness type books lately, and my rants on those didn't strike me as entirely PC enough to commit to the internet where anyone could read them.  In any case, the three books were "Ghettonation", "It's the Little Things", and "Ask a Mexican".  "Ask a Mexican" was hilarious, Spanglish-laced, often raunchy, and pretty educational.   "Ghettonation" and "It's the Little Things" were both thought provoking, though the philosophy-wonk in me was irritated by the constant flux-state of terms.  All three authors talked about behaviors that weren't necessarily co-grouped with any given race, but whose meaning changed depending on who was doing them and who was observing them, so that was an interesting perspective.  The two books on black-white racial relations were both written by journalists, so they were more observational than theoretical.  As such, they reflected the fact that feelings and observations about race relations are of course not monolithic, since, y'know, relations at their basic level happen between individuals, not groups.  It's impossible to say anything consistent and non-racist about relations between two racial groups, I've decided, because you're always going to be slighting the perspective and experiences of many members of both groups.  Maybe this is why comedians from out-of-group walk such a landmine on commenting about in-group behaviors?  It seems to me the easiest way to navigate all the landmines is to focus on treating each person as individuals, but remembering that part of how an individual identity is formed is in relation to a set of groups (this set to be presumed, of course, to be both overlapping and intermingled).  But it's a constant mental strain to remember to treat individuals as individuals (when we don't know them well) because it's so easy to make generalizations and most of us have lazy brains.  And also I'm starting to be aware how much the idea of "individual" and how that relates to "society" is itself something that varies strongly across cultures.

For me, at least, the dominant cultural grouping is not skin-tone, but outlook.  I don't think I have any friends who aren't kinda, well, geeky.  If you had to assign me a sociological tribe, it would be geek.  You can be from any country, you can be any color, that's all fine with me.  But I don't think I have any friends who haven't got at least one or two geeky interests.  Military history, D&D, chess, debate, sf/f, Model U.N., geek summer camp, theater & musicals, those kinds of things.  Or philosophy or poetry, even building little models.  Or making armor for the S.C.A.  As long as you've got some kind of personal little passion, I can empathize and get interested.  People of any age/gender/race whose lives revolve around partying and don't have any interests on the side, those are the ones who confuse me.