What do you call a gang of white teens who racially abuse my wife?
Wankers, same as I call any racist (if I don't use something stronger).
Tell me how class comes into that, please.
Why are the "gang of white teens" racist? Is their racism a product of their environment, or is it genetically determined?
Everything I've experienced, as well as everything I've read, tells me it's the former, not the latter. That being the case, of course class is implicated, and here's how:
From the time you're born, you're socialised (or to use the old-fashioned term, "raised") to conform to certain social and societal norms.
One of those norms is an instilled belief that hierarchical relations are normal, that "adults" are better than "children; that people from my side of the Thames are better than people from the other side; that an "Englishman" is better than a "Welshman", for example. The problem with this seemingly natural belief in hierarchical relations is that it is predicated on a presumption of asymmetry - that
A is "better than"
B, and that
B is "worse than"
A - that has no basis in fact.
So there's instance number one of class being involved - racism, the othering of others "who are not like me", is of a piece with a wider set of practices (such as sexism) predicated on presumptions of superiority. It can't actually exist outside of that set of hierarchical human relations, whether your society is "primitive" or "modern".
A lot of people never properly take on board that such a belief/set of beliefs is implicated in furthering the "divide and rule" strategy of the powerful, or that not questioning such a belief also does so. The question we then need to ask is
cui bono - who benefits?
It's not particularly difficult to determine that those who benefit most from "divide and rule" are also those with the most power to perpetuate such a strategy. If you can convince people to hate those in the same social stratum as themselves for being a different colour; following a different religion; eating different food; having a different accent; using a wheelchair, rather than investigating "who benefits?" from the perpetuation of such social tensions, then ruling those people is a lot easier.
So there's instance number two of class being involved - a concentration on racism rather than on what causes racism, misses the fact that there is a benefit derived from racism by those
with power (over those with less power), in that some of the focus of people who have less power is directed sideways rather than upward.
