I completely understand what you are saying, so I do not see why you need to add those qualifiers.

I’m someone of Iranian descent that lives in America as well. I’ve seen these sorts of things happen. I know that Persian, or fars is an ethnicity. And I know one can be Iranian and not be Persian.

I also know that my fars relatives are some of the most racist people I know. No, actually, they are the most racist people I know. Does that matter here? No, not really. But for them to be racist, they have to hold views that are beyond the most elemental definition of the word. It’s racist when El Al screeners give more attention to a 20 year old unmarried man Palestinian than they do to an 80 year old Russian Babushka. It’s also completely pragmatic, and it will happen regardless of the particular views that this person has or doesn’t have when it comes to Palestinians as a people. It’s lowercase racist. However, when my Amoo insists that I should go visit Rasht, because, well, the girls are just total sluts, that has a heavy undertone of racism, because he’s talking about girls that aren’t Persian.

And if you’ve bore with my overly complex analogy, Venmo isn’t going after you because you’re Persian in the sense that they think Persians are racially inferior, lacking morals, or just plain ol’ dumb.

So that’s the distinction that I’d like to make — between racism and Racism, between pragmatic approaches and between bigotry. It’s seemingly stupid as an outsider that they would do that. But I don’t know what they’re dealing with, internally.