[jrm4]

This is, without question, the most naive thing I have ever read on this entire site.

People will and do treat you differently because of your skin color. And how people treat you affects you, whether you think so or not. Either you live in a hole and never come out, or you haven't yet fully comprehended what's going on around you.

It's NOT simple. It's not "getting called names all the time" or anything like that. It takes time to fully get.

[pure_simplicity]

I'm not denying that some bad people will treat you differently for your skin color. What I am saying is that how you respond to it is far more important than how people treat you (for most situations in our modern society, though some situations can be insurmountably overwhelming). Rather than me being naive, it is you being too black and white in your thinking when reading my comment (by making a false dilemma).

I've experienced neo-nazi racism against my person because of my skin color (and I mean literal self-identified neo-nazis, not merely a label given through the slanderous designation of some intolerant leftist). Despite those experiences, because I chose not to succumb to a mentality of victimhood those people's hateful attitude and behavior did not have the harmful effect on me it could have had.

However, if you believe that racism is as pervasive as the air we breathe, and the country is systemically racist, and white people suffer from implicit bias (and mysteriously it's only white people, kinda racist huh?) then I have to disagree. Racism exists, but the vast majority of people are good people. These days, the real racists (besides the tiny minority of actual white supremacists) are the so called 'anti-racists'. Their anti-white rhetoric to me is as appalling as the anti-black rhetoric of white supremacists. They forget the golden rule, don't do to others what you don't want done to you.