How racist ARE we?

Apologies for stealing my title from that crap documentary/experiment on channel 4 last year, but I feel it suits.
Racism is a delicate subject that few dare to delve into anymore due to the fear that it may end in argument or be socially unacceptable, but personally I don’t have a problem with discussing racism and I don’t think others should either. I mean, nearly all of us have told black jokes, we’ve all put on an Indian accent and laughed at the name of a curry, so if we take part in a form of tributary racism, then we should man up and get talking about the real deal.
Racism is something we all understand. We’ve all heard Martin Luther’s speech, we’ve all learned about segregation in the south and the KKK. We all know about slavery and shudder at the thought of the times when the masters of the world would care for their swineherds more than the coloured folk polishing their shoes, and yet we seem to be under the impression that racism is a thing of the past, and it certainly isn’t.
I hear racist remarks on a daily basis from family, friends, and even on tv, people referring to folk as ‘my black friend’ for example when they could have just said ‘my friend’. I’m not going to lie,  I do it too, but I’ve grown up in a country where there aren’t really many ‘coloured’ people. Throughout my time in primary and secondary school there was only a maximum of two black children, a couple of asians, and the rest were welsh or english.
I have a feeling that most ‘racism’ isn’t necessarily malicious, it’s simply a reaction from people who are seeing folk who do not mirror those they are used to.
An example of this would be my gran. My gran casually uses phrases like ‘Negro black’ and ‘Dusky people’. In the political correctness bible this would be seen as racist, however my gran is just making use of the old fashioned language she knows and using it to describe the colour of people’s skin.
It doesn’t really matter that ‘colour doesn’t matter’ because it’s just a description. If you want to call me white, call me white, I won’t think of it as discrimination, you’re just describing me.
In the case of the workplace, black/brown/yellow? people do face hardships, it’s true, but that will change over time. I would imagine if a white person went over to Africa and tried to get a job they would face similar problems, or even in China. No matter where you are, if you look different, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb, but what does it matter? If people stare, they are probably wondering what you’re doing there, not saying ‘That person must be less intelligent because they’re a different colour’.
We live our lives in a way that is most comfortable for us. If we have lived in a society lacking in diversity, then we will become accustomed to that and will find anything out of the ordinary slightly threatening. I personally don’t think it’s a problem, if we all come together and respect and embrace eachother fully then cultures will mix and people will no longer have differences and there’ll be no point going abroad because our countries will have the exact same shops and the exact same foods as any other.
When racism turns violent, THAT is when it becomes a problem, and when there is obvious discrimination about the intelligence of people from other cultures, that’s a problem also. Who cares about jokes, do you really think black people from ‘the bronx’ don’t joke about white trash women and how wimpy white guys look?
Let’s just drop the awkwardness and get talking about it, and the same goes for homosexuality, religion, and all the other ‘sensetive issues’.

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