You know, a lot of people look at racism through the prism of "x person or group is a racist, that's inhuman!" followed by, "racists aren't human." That's always struck me as the same kind of wrong as a guy calling a girl or woman a slut and then bragging about how many "bitches" he's "bagged."

The thing about prisms though, is that they, like the things they view or the light they split, are multifaceted or exist in more than one state.

I had a friend in college who for all intents, acted like a greaser straight out of the 1950's, one of those guys that occasionally tell me that they forget I'm not white, who include me in racist conversations with an addendum like, "obviously, you're not like that." I used to think that maybe it was because I grew up in a different environment than my parents, with very little contact to others of my parent culture, or that I was one of those "twinkies" people talked about. Now, I think that it's because I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, at least in person to person interactions.

Either way, I think racism is very much a symptom of isolation as well as fear. Sometimes those fears are justified by some prior experience. In response to the author's question, "What should he have to go through?" I think the best place to start is "an education," by which I mean face to face experience with the thing most feared.

Sometimes throwing a person to the wolves is exactly what a human needs, if only to generate new perspectives. This goes for everyone, including ardent, well-meaning anti-racists too.