Dinesh Desouza wrote a book called The End of Racism. I found it helpful in thinking through the social complexities of the topic.
Basically he argued that true racism came out of the Darwinian evolutionist camps, when people began to apply Darwin’s taxonomy of animals to man. Before that point though slavery certainly existed, it was not clear cut between ethnic lines. In fact is was mostly tribal and economic.
Desouza basically argues that while the evil of human taxonomy is the sort of moral evil implied by the word racism, it largely doesn’t exist any more on any substantial level.
The post-modern view of racism basically condemns self-interested rationalism, and personal risk-management choices as being the same as a human taxonomy.
But what is interesting are the studies of high risk job workers like taxi driver. They found that it was true that blacks had a more difficult time getting a cab ride, but most of the cab drivers that refused to pick them up were themselves black. Their discrimination was clearly not on the basis of a racial taxonomy, but based on their knowledge of risk within their industry.
Basically, everyone is an actuary to some extent or another. They may or may not be any good at it, or they may have bad information guiding their judgements, but most people are not denying their own self interest in order to hurt a group of people whom they have deemed subhuman.
This of course does not deny that men are sinful, and may out of selfish interests harm others within a particular people group, carelessly or even with malice. But that is not the problem facing society today according to Desouza, except now perhaps maybe for a minority of black youth who are currently taking their sin on the streets to a whole new level.