For instance, the old lady in the bus, who presses her bag harder to her chest, because of subtle fear of getting robbed. I agree that it is racist when she would think “oh, a black women, she wants to steal!”. But in this case, she probably hardly notices that she grabs her bag stronger because of a black women entering the bus.

The above is actually happend, according to alice haster. She (alice hasters) experienced that, as a black person, she noticed that the women would grab her bag stronger after seeing her.

I don’t question that.

I also didn’t notice before, that “skincolor” (as in the color of a color-pencil) was always white-ish for me. when i thought of skincolor, i never thought of black skin.

I don’t see that as racist, people think of themselves first, that’s natural.

I was once part of a german conference, with many people. A black person said something during the conference and after the conference i met this same person again. Because i wanted to ask this person something, i started to speak english. Altough this same person had spoken perfect german a few hours ago.

So the natural assumption was that this person was a foreigner who doesn’t speak german. This is a racist stereotype. And altough i corrected myself in this situation, i didn’t notice the racist part until i drove home a few hours later.

I don’t think that’s racist, it’s just an assumption people make based on their experiences: you know what the “locals” typically look like, so it’s not that farfetched to think that anyone that looks significantly different (due to their skin color, clothing, hair, etc.) is probably a foreigner.

Going back to your first example, I think these kinds of things happen because the person is unfamiliar (has little meaningful contact) with people of other races or because of stereotypes, like you mentioned. I don’t think avoiding a word vaguely related to slavery will make a difference on either of those things.