Do you think some people are racist but genuinely don’t know it!

@plungesponge You make some valid points here. In my own experience, I worked closely in a primarily black town in a hospital of mostly black staff, we worked together, ate together, went out on the town after work together, eventually they called me (affectionately) "nigger" I was part of a blended group that evolved into a homogeny with the lines of race, erased more or less. This brought me closer to a point of both identity, empathy, and an heightened need to understand black history/culture which mostly remains today. Does this make sense to you?

Yes, makes sense. The way race is discussed is quite misleading really, people associate it with skin color and good/bad judgments. But it's about tribal affiliations, and those are actually pretty colourblind, as anyone who has formed bonds with others through hardship can attest. I always point to the example of Japan, a very racially homogenous island for centuries, and did that bring them peace? Hell no, it was one clan vs another to the death, that's what tribalism can do to humans fighting over resources, race is just a smokescreen.

@plungesponge It kind of hurts me when black people say to me, "Don't try and say you know anything about the black experience" Granted my skin is white I don't get "shade" by passersby, but I was in the middle of the Watts riots, had to run for safety, and my best friend EVER died too early on and I still grieve. Way too much assumptions on both sides and I don't have an answer.

The only way people can see past their racial assumptions is when they come to know you personally. Unfortunately racism often also shuts down the opportunity to know anyone personally. There are real cultural and even racial differences in the human species that exist as big blurry blobs, but within those blobs is a huge amount of variation and there's a hell of a lot of overlap between the blobs.

To see the blobs as completely separate entities is dumb, just as pretending the blobs don't exist is also dumb. The secret is being able to be aware of the blobs while giving as much chance as possible that the individual you're dealing with is part of a blob that overlaps with your part of your blob.