Im a white guy. Ginger to be even more specific. I was dating a new woman who happened to be a dark skinned beautiful black woman. One afternoon one of my buddies comes over while she is at the house. We are all out in the backyard just chilling. Chatting it up and all that. That’s when I realized my friend started every story or comment about the people he was with. He always made it a point to let my new friend know that the guy in the story was black. To the point where I realized he was trying to show he wasn’t a racist, but it kept coming off cheesy. Another guy at a bar that was 90% black, 8% other brown skinned dudes and like 2% white. I’m sitting there listening to the one other white guy in the outside area tell stories. He’s hammered and obviously not from around the way. He’s constantly bringing up the fact he is hanging around a black person, then he brings up calling the basketball team for some backup and again infers that it’s because their black. One dude looked at me and I looked at him and he just gave me the look that was unmistakeable. He was over the story. Anyways. Now that I noticed this, I pay more attention to people when they tell a story or make a comment. There are so many people that feel the need to point out race as a preface to the person they’re talking about. I understand if race is about to be a part of the story and it’s pertinent to have context, but normally it’s like, “yeah so Bob, jim, Brad and Mike are there. Mike is black.” No reason for that. I guess it’s implied the other three dudes are not. But really, when do we get to a point when this petty stuff stops? It may seem small, but really, it’s the small consistent, socially accepted, words we use that promote racism. I found it interesting the type of people you may not suspect of being racist making or inferring racially motivated comments that are not needed in the situation they are in or discussing. They may think they are showing how accepting or diverse they are, but in my opinion, it is just a sign of bigotry engrained into our common lexicon and society. Am I off base?