Question Author
Gromit
Ah...but hang on - you've conflated 'racist' with 'racially prejudiced'.
The two are completely different, and being racially prejudiced is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be constraining and lead you to make invalid assumptions about people, but it's nothing like racism.
Racial prejudice:
A new bloke who's family are from South East Asia starts working in your office and you automatically assume that he's into martial arts films.
Racist:
A new girl starts working in your office, who's family are from the West Indies and you refuse to let her bank the office lottery collection because "black people are thieves".
I see the difference between racial prejudice and racism as former being one that we are socially conditioned into, and the latter being the one that you act upon, based on the former.
You can be a perfectly nice human being with racial prejudices, but in my opinion, it's impossible to be a nice racist.