I've noticed more and more over the last decade a confusion between race and culture. Race != culture. Perhaps youngsters are being taught that criticising a culture is racism. It is not.
I'm perfectly comfortable with criticising a culture.
I see a lot of people are comfortable drawing arbitrary lines grouping people together into categories and calling it something else. Whether you want to get into whether Italians are a race or a culture is a semantic issue, and it completely skips the point. You're lumping a group of people together and making broad (negative) stereotypes about them without nuance or understanding.
I'm perfectly comfortable with criticising a culture.