I appreciate people (like you) who are trying to be open minded because when you actually meet people abroad they don't care if you are from US or some other country. They care about you as a person. There are fanatical exceptions but don't worry about those. Linking racism to this is different issue. It's quite impossible to have functional nation that accepts all foreign customs, so there must be compromises on all sides.

During my stay and visits in US the absolutely worst thing was tipping. Believe it or not :)

Paying extra for getting the food on the table is ridicilous. I could do that myself if they allowed. It is (in my opinion) the heart of "everything must be paid for" culture. Smile is worth 50c, nice words $1 and pretty face 25c. Nothing is free, not even smile. To make poor connection to my earlier post then I must say that older american people expect tipping to provide them good service in other countries where tipping actually makes people feel just opposite. They take pride in what they do and get paid for it, then along comes a jerk that thinks money can make them more important than other customers. Flashing money at every corner makes local people jealous and angry even though that was not the purpose of the american tourist.

In US I was in a shuttle from airport to hostel (poor student travel), the driver drove around getting as many people as possible in and then headed to the destination. First dropping off everyone except me and my friends he finally found the correct street but we looked for right place for at least 20mins in traffic. After I paid he dared to ask tip for the driver, amazing. Scary part is that it is custom to give the tip no matter what to the point where he got angry. Well I did give him a tip.

Similar thing happened in China where taxi got lost and he had to make a U-turn. At that very moment the meter went off and he started driving through streets. After 30mins he found the right place, asked police for directions. I tried to offer him little extra because of the trouble but he refused to take anything more than what was in the meter.

I complain for nothing but trust me tipping in annoying because nobody knows how to behave and money is something that people have strong feelings for. As I think of this more I think tipping and flashing money can actually create the stereotype of arrogance.

I think your original post was more about what you can do in personal level to make things better. Here I try to look at things that have made me angry and think about differences in cultures. I cannot give right or wrong answer to you but pinpoint some issues that I have found rather problematic. Politics is another issue and I don't think single person can affect that. Even in national level politics is too confusing and international level the game is even worse.