If someone who has buddies who are black, clearly they are not racist. It may well be that they are confident enough in their non racist views that they can joke about racism. Just a thought.
Because I've seen you tear into 'white' people, Charlie. But I also don't see you as a racist. Lots of posters on this forum do though.
Gently disagreeing. Somebody CAN have a friend of another race and still embrace a form of racism. My mother was a prime example. She was raised in a culture in which she was taught that black people were not inferior, but different and the races should not mix. Intellectually she came to know better but emotionally she never quite shook off all that. She had a black 'nanny' for me when I was a baby and adored the woman--paid her the lion's share of her meager salary at that time. She had black coworkers and a black boss (Don Perkins, the former Dallas Cowboy fullback, to be precise) that she thought a lot of. She never flinched when I brought black friends home from school. She never harmed a black person, never spoke unkindly to one, and frequently helped out as a neighbor.
And still, in spite of all that, she would say things like: "Have you noticed that as the 'nigras' get more education, their skin is getting lighter?"
And it never occurred to her what a racist remark that was.
Under currents of racism exist. Some black people feel them toward white people. Some white people feel them toward black people. And neither need be either harmful nor evil.
The more we focus on it, the more we geneate resentments and try to punish people for who they are, the more we call attention to it, the more racism will persist. The more we shrug off the silly, non harmful stuff and refuse to get all offended and insulted, the more quickly will that form of racism fade into a memory of the American culture.