Re: We hear these stories all the time
I used to think that maybe a lot of racists would change views if they only knew a few non-white people and realized they were no different, and could be perfectly nice people.
Where you have gone most wrong in this, is assuming that racism is a white people thing. It isn't. It's a people thing. All races of people are just as racist as the next. Where your premise is wrong you can't really be surprised when your argument falls; that is after all how things are supposed to work.
My view would be that because skin colour is extremely visible it sticks in peoples minds and when they encounter a bad experience its due to the black/white man rather than just chalking it up as that guy being an arse. Thus over time the skin colour comes to be associated with negative feelings. Where they have a positive experience, such as a friend of a different colour, its not black/white Jerry that gets the positive association, just Jerry.
I've been called all sorts of things by people of all races. Some of those things have been negative, some have been positive, but by ascribing each interaction to an individual rather than a group, bias can be avoided whether that bias is positive or negative.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
