You can be racist and have black friends
Whenever people use the “black friend” defense, I instantly think of one of my friends (these names will be changed).
Now, I first met my friend Daniel back in 9th grade. One of his friends, a (black) guy named Emmanuel, had developed a crush on me, and we started talking and became close friends. The next year, because Emmanuel liked me, Daniel started inviting me and some of my friends to hot tub parties and other get-togethers with his group of friends, and our friend groups became close.
My first impression of Daniel was that he was racist, and that it was odd that he even had a black best friend. I later somehow became close friends with him, and had kind of just accepted that he was going to make off-color remarks.
He made remarks about Black and Asian people pretty consistently, but he didn’t think he was being racist because he was part Native American (…which is another story entirely).
He’d suggest that our one (Black) friend should have a big ass because she’s Black, he’d constantly make remarks about “Southern Black women”, he’d tell me that my mom is “so Black” and mock her accent, he’d make fun of our Asian friends’ eye shape, and so on.
He would call me and my Black friends “mocha” as what he thought of as an affectionate term. He suggested that Emmanuel’s mother, simply by becoming a successful Black professional “dominated” Emmanuel’s father.
He said he’s not attracted to black women, particularly not the “Southern Blacks”, all while his first few makeout sessions were with black women and he thinks my sister is one of the hottest women around even though she’s black and he doesn’t “usually like black chicks”.
He didn’t say that black people were inferior, use the n-word, hate all black people (or Asian people) or act out any of the most insidious forms of racist behavior commonly considered racist in our society…but he is clearly racist. Whenever someone uses the “I have a ___ friend” defense, I think of Daniel in particular because - now a rising college senior - most of his friends happen to be Black and Asian. But guess what? He’s still racist!
You can be friends with people of other races, be attracted to people of other races, and be 1/16 Cherokee, and none of those things exempt you from being racist.
