What do you think drives someone to be a racist?

My parents were prejudice and I was ashamed of what they said and did. When I was in second grade I remember we had only one other student who was not white. I didn’t consider her any different than anyone else. Then when we had summer break and came back to school in 5th grade, her and several other girls had formed a clique and they treated people awful. She was still the only student that was not white. I didn’t consider her actions those due to her race. I considered her actions a fault of her choosing to be around the wrong people and making wrong choices. This is how I consider all people even though I was raised in a home with parents who were racist. I chose to not be. Everyone has that choice. We are not born that way. But our environment can hugely influence us. A gang could be made up of all white people and treat people badly causing people to be against white people if they have never been around white people before and that is the only thing they know of them. But the same can be true if a gang is a mixture of all races and treat people badly, what do you choose then? Which race or ethnicity do you choose to blame? This is the problem, people want to blame a race when it isn’t the race, it isn’t even the gang, it is the choices of individuals.