Beast Wars

I feel like racism is something that many people are exposed at least three to four times a week. Some forms of racism can be more subtle and unfortunately some can be more severe. It's difficult to weigh whether subtle racism is more preferrable in society than severe racism. It's obvious that people are more accepting of subtle racism when we forge stereotypes that we jokingly laugh at and make assumptions of others based only on what's been fed to us and allow that to dictate our actions around certain groups of people. However, this subtle racism could be more damaging in the long-run on a psychological scale. Take this scenario: You walk on to the bus and bump into a person then apologize. Is it more damaging if:
A) The person immediately barks at you in anger, revealing what they really are
B) The person accepts your apology then trips you purposefully after you walk past them

I'd like to believe the second option to be more damaging, but not everyone will agree with me and they shouldn't. The person in the first scenario reveals their true colors and shows that some people just behave a radically different way that's hard to accept. The second scenario may give you relief that the person forgave you, but then immediately instill distrust in others that will continue to fester until it becomes hard to suppress.

The same issue is with subtle racism. A person could hear millions of jokes about a group of people and laugh. But the million-and-oneth  joke could influence how that person views those people, filling their heads with thoughts like "Maybe these people really ARE like people say". Media outlets are great at achieving this.

Bringing it to the Color Complex I have to say that the statement about sex with blacks being equated to bestiality really struck a chord somewhere inside me. I could hear plenty of times that black people are apes or whatever, but seeing that many people believed something so foolish is flabbergasting. That one sentence seemed to degrade black people as a race more than anything I've heard or seen in my life. It truly showed the image that was being projected on people and makes their mistreatment over the years much more depressing in my eyes. So now I ask in futility, has anyone ever felt like they reached a point where they realized how horrible racism truly is?