not a bad thing to preach, just so long as at some point you can separate an altruistic ideology from the reality of the world we live in.
i learned my greatest lessons about racism from racist black people. i started off as a young teacher saying "my soul is colorless, i am human."
but i learned eventually that this lost respect in the eyes of some of my students...because although i felt colorless - they felt black, and they saw me as white. i articulate my words and wore dress shirts - i was foreign to them...i was white.
they felt that when they entered a store they were the black guy there and they could sense the fear in others or the clerk who may suspect them of stealing something, they felt they got treated differently by police, and being black was a part of who they were.
now...i also know white people who i love and respect as intelligent people - more intelligent than me - who say the same thing but in a different way.
ie - i have a friend who says he does not feel he is better because he is white, but he feels he is better off because he is white...that the culture he was raised in is superior to other cultures...
they are both racist. but they are that way because racism is reality.
so although my core ideology has not changed too much - i still feel colorless, i feel like a human - i have learned that just because i feel this way, does not make it real. my feeling colorless holds less weight than the black kid feeling black.