Answer

Sorry for the delay. For some reason I missed this question.
The question of racism is a complicated one. You can search here on the site for columns I wrote about it, and you’ll see that in fact it has no clear definition. And I certainly do not see it as a serious problem that requires a solution, even if from time to time there are problematic phenomena in this area. I also discussed there the issue of not admitting students to institutions because of the institution’s spirit. Again, that has nothing whatsoever to do with racism, whether I like it or not.
Beyond all that, it is clear that there is a completely crazy hysteria surrounding the issue of racism. For example, the statements you quoted at the end are not at all shocking to me. I refuse to surrender to the accepted demagoguery and brainwashing. There really is primitive religiosity, and sometimes it has a connection to background and ethnic community. In my opinion, that is a fact. That does not mean it is true of every individual in that community, but relating to a public always involves generalizations. Such statements may be in better or worse taste, but I do not see in them any inherent flaw. The same goes for Garbuz’s remarks about the amulet-kissers, which in my view are an accurate description of the prevalent primitive religiosity (incidentally, as far as I remember he did not mention ethnic communities, so those who were offended are only testifying about themselves that they are racist by their own standard. But even if he had mentioned them, I would not see anything wrong with that. At most, a bit tactless).
When they sent me that video (even before I saw the uproar it caused online), I chuckled to myself for several reasons. First, I was not convinced that this was necessarily racism on the part of those girls. It occurred to me that perhaps it was mocking the ulpana’s racism. Beyond that, there are jokes of better or worse quality in Purim videos made by high-schoolers, and it seems ridiculous to me to draw conclusions from them. And third, in an era when the entire Religious Zionist public, together with its rabbinic and political leadership, is one giant outrage of desecration of God’s name, to see a stupid video by a few girls as such an outrage (that is what Roy Lachmanovitch wrote on the Kipa website) is simply a sad joke. If that is what makes him ashamed of belonging to the sector, then that itself is a crazy outrage against the sector.