Who you grew up with, what you were taught (education), your employment, and past history all influence you in some kind of way to make you either more raciest, or think of racism at a whole other level.
"Sometimes it's [racial prejudice] like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating. (Marian Anderson, "My Life in a White World"). When you think about who you grew up with, what you did while you were growing up with them, do you believe that what you did while you were with that person you would have done by yourself? Think about it if your white did you mainly hang around white people? Or how about if your black did you mainly "roll" with black people? Many people are raciest today because of the people they grew up with. Many people don't realize that they are being raciest until after the damage is done, until after they hurt someone's feelings, until after they physically, mentally and emotionally tortured that person. Take the music population for example, many African American rappers use the word "nigga" but if a white person were to use it, they would be considered raciest, so is a African American raciest if he uses the word "nigga"? I doubt it. Malcolm X once said," Racism is a human problem and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated." (Malcolm X, American civil rights activist, speech). Which is absolutely true. Although we blame it on the white men before our time, we keep t going strong, we keep racism around, even when we continue to try to eliminate it, it haunts us, and will haunt everyone, until the human population is one skin complexion, and even then, there will be racism, even if it's because someone's hair is not done right, or because some one's clothes don't match, someway or another racism will haunt us until the end of time.