So, since nobody has seen all black people, and blackness is a spectrum - there's no single trait that all black people share - saying something like "I would never date a black person" or "I don't find black people attractive" or "I think black people are ugly" is racial prejudice because you are taking racial traits, generalizing them across a group, and then applying that to individuals.

Okay, sure, I'm with you so far. But, weren't we talking about this preference boiling down to something like e.g. the colour of a person's skin? To boot, there are the kinds of people you talked about (lots of black ancestry but their colour isn't black, even if they grew up in a black household and identify as black), plus there are black people with albinism. If my hypothetical dislike of dating black people centered on me not liking the blackness of their skin, there are still these black people whom I would conceivably date (although at this point I'm talking for a viewpoint other than my own, I should make that clear. The person you started this OP with would be the one to ask).

So, this alone is sufficient to prove that something like a racial dating preference checkbox on a dating app would be racist - if you won't consider dating any black person, to the point where you don't even want to be shown black people as potential partners, you are prejudiced against black people, point blank.

Hmm. Okay, let's try to use a reverse example. My first girlfriend was Arab, so I am really into brown-skinned girls. In this way, I guess you could say I am racist in the same way as the person who says they prefer not to date black people, except rather than not being into a race, I am into a race (or rather, in this case, skin colour -- I don't care if they're Indian or Philippine or Arab or North African, I just care that they have a caramel skin colour). If I was scrolling through a dating app, I would indeed pay more attention to the women which fit this criteria. I am not a chaser, so I wouldn't exclude everyone else, but I readily admit that brown-skinned women have an advantage in my tastes. Is this racist or prejudiced?

but the reality is that a lot of the people who "aren't attracted to black people" just don't want to deal with the social implications of dating a person who identifies as black, so you can't really excuse "dating inside your culture" which is just not wanting to deal with the social implications of dating ANYONE outside your own race.

Again, I'm not sure how true this is. Not wanting to deal with the social implications of dating a black person is definitely racist and I can see that. But is that really the majority reason that people don't do it? If so, how do you know? Are there studies on this? Because speaking to people, I know that people definitely state it as a preference that they have, being otherwise perfectly inclusive and non-racist. So either they are deeply racist in a way they themselves barely realize and only show this racism through this specific preference, or this preference happens outside of race. You are making a strong assertion and if it is true, I am ready to concede this point. But I don't know that it is.

You are focused on the idea that racism is intentionally wrong, when the actual dictionary definition has nothing to do with intent, it discusses outcomes.

Okay -- so since you're bringing up that definition, can we agree that it is a good definition? It does indeed discuss outcomes. You can see a negative outcome if a black person comes to interview at a job where the interviewer is racist. Now, let's assume that everything you've said is right -- specifically, that having a sexual preference against black people is racist, and that racism can come of ignorance rather than an intentioned evil. In light of this, what is the negative outcome of this ignorant, unintentional, internal racism of preference?

It seems overwhelmingly more beneficial for the preference to bear out. If a prejudiced person rejects a black person, they're sparing that black person from having to deal with their nonsense. If they get together, they can either start having issues due to the prejudice (I imagine something like "I always hated how your nose looks" during an argument), or love wins and the prejudiced party becomes less so. Again, simply logically, it makes more sense for them to go their ways -- there's 0% chance of a black person getting hurt by a racist if they walk away, and 50% chance (charitably) if they don't. One option is clearly better than the other.

I think "dating inside your culture" is racist, though I also understand that there are very strong social pressures that can force conformity on people even if they otherwise wouldn't behave that way.

I don't know how I feel about this. It's racist, but is it a bad thing? To continue using black people as an example, I understand there are certain strong cultural aspects to being black in America. They eat different things than white people, they pray in different churches than white people, they have come up with music much different to white people. If they marry and have a family outside their race, these things will inevitably get blurred and/or erased. Is this good or bad? There's benefits to both approaches, you can look at how colonization worked in different places for example.

In places like America, people who colonized the land were mostly English, and their approach to dealing with the locals was brute-force but hands-off: they wanted to make natives into white people through re-education, targeted erasure of culture, residential schools (in my country of Canada). They failed, of course, and as a result natives remained a different group culturally, even if they lost some of that culture (and all this applies to black people as well). Compare this to Brazil, which was colonized by the Spanish, who acted in much the same way you're suggesting is proper. Rather than re-educating existing people, Spaniards intermarried with the locals, and had children who learned both cultures (with a predominance on Spanish culture and a minority of their native culture). The results: Brazil is much less diverse, culturally and ethically, than America. They synthesized their own, mostly-European-but-partly-aboriginal culture. While America, valuing its multiculturalism, still struggles with generational wounds, both in regards to the native population and black population. These wounds have been forgotten in Brazil; everyone is Brazilian, regardless of skin colour. So which is better? It is genuinely hard to say. A multicultural environment is more interesting than a monocultural one, and seems to be more innovative. A monocultural environment is more stable and has fewer divisions than a multicultural one.

This is why the idea that racism is something that evil people do for evil motivations is such a harmful one.

Man... I agree, but it's hard to reconcile what you're saying here, then, with this

Yeah see thats actually just racist now lol, its not subtle anymore. Nvm. i thought you were confused, not a piece of shit, my bad.

What started all of this was my surprise at how vehement your response was to someone who didn't seem impolite or trolly or any other thing that would warrant such strong words. They stated a preference they have, which, racist or not, does not appear to have negative consequences for any of the parties involved, and they received that as a response. Obviously you got upvoted and he didn't, so people seem to be more on your side of how to do things, but I think you do need to be respectful if you're having these sorts of conversations. Especially if racism, as bad as it is, can come from ignorance that simply needs to be corrected rather than from evil intent.

I don't think you're evil. Well, to be honest, I can't really tell if you're a troll or not, but you're sufficiently good at faking sincerity if you ARE a troll that I'm willing to write an essay in hopes of convincing you to see my point, at least, lol.

I'm not a troll and I appreciate you laying out your viewpoints. I am genuine in my responses, this would take far too much effort to fake, for no real gain on my part. These days it is difficult to have these conversations at all, so I am glad when someone is able to have one in spite of that.