I totally agree with you here. Culture != race, and to ignore culture means that you are not seeing the whole picture. Anybody who works internationally and ignores cultural issues is going to have a bad time. Acknowledging cultural differences does not have to be negative, and it certainly does not make someone racist.
Citing of cultural differences is often (I'd even say usually) code for citing racial stereotypes as if they were common sense.
I'd say that it's worth discussion that the cultural differences cited by Gladwell about Korea are the same as 150 year old stereotypes of Chinese culture.
