>Also, how is the desire to maintain a common identity in your small town racist?
When the desire to maintain a common identity is based on racial or ethnic identity, and that desire excludes the possibility that races or ethnicities other than your own can, or should, be a part your community, then that desire can be accurately described as racist or at best xenophobic.
>Many of our country's rural trends are a pushback against multiculturalism, which pushes the idea that there is no right or wrong way to live as long as you don't hurt other people. Common languages, religions, norms, customs, and beliefs simply don't matter.
I don't see what's supposed to be wrong with that premise.
>But how can a sense of community form when you can't even talk to your neighbors? Why is this pushback being met with cries of racism?
It already has, and does - and that sense of community as it includes people of different races, ethnicities and religions, is precisely what is being pushed against. Talking about language is a red herring - this "push against multiculturalism" is also a push against immigrants who speak English perfectly well, and who integrate perfectly well into their communities, and are law abiding citizens, but are not considered white and may not be Christian.
Until the demographics of the country began to shift to the point that the majority status and political power of wh - sorry - people of European descent - began to be threatened, this didn't seem to be an issue. It is clearly a movement based on an attempt to normalize the redefinition of culture and community around race and ethnicity.