Honestly, I think everyone is a bit racist. When people don't look or behave like you, it's easy to treat them differently, sometimes a lot differently.
I work with people from a variety of backgrounds (race, language, nationality) and I'm married to someone with a different race, language, and nationality as well. Even so, when I read articles online, I picture the other person as my race, background, and gender, even though that's unlikely to be the case. I also catch myself thinking less of someone who is different from me, before I catch myself and really think about what they said/did (usually it's just the accent or mannerisms throwing me off).
I think that's normal, and you're doing the right thing by acknowledging it and trying to catch yourself. The next step that works for me is to build trust with my co-workers who are different from me, and ask them if I'm being insensitive or something. It takes time to build that trust, but my spouse calls me out all the time and I express my gratitude each time. I still make mistakes, but hopefully those around me know I don't mean anything by it. I also catch my spouse being racist, and they're a bit more defensive about it but appreciative nonetheless.
Good luck! Life is all about continually improving ourselves. I don't think we'll ever reach a point where racism is dead, but hopefully we can get to a point where it's at least manageable.
I think you are describing biases, which we do indeed all have. They don't (necessarily) make you racist, they make you human. The folks who refuse to make any attempt to acknowledge that (or who openly revel in it), and won't do the work to mitigate those biases - those are the racists and bigots.
Being able to sit with discomfort is key to teaching oneself to be better. The hardest part is realising that there's never a point where you have fixed the problem and can relax - the deeper you dig, the more things you find to be uncomfortable about.
Good on you for noticing, and not just going 'meh it's how I am', 'it's how I was raised' or a bajillion other cop outs.
Realizing you need to change, having the impetus to do so, and actually rolling up your sleeves and fucking doing something about it are three very difficult things to do. Their difficulty increases as you proceed down the path from realization to action.
It isn't easy. You'll fall on your face several times; you may not ever even reach your goal, but eventually you'll look over your shoulder at the person you were and realize how far you have come.
That's sure a lot better feeling than sitting there doing sweet fuck all about it.
Being racist is ephemeral. People can choose to keep being racist, or choose to stop being racist. The OP chose to stop being racist.
The thing you can't teach or train, is self-inflection. If you don't have that, you'll likely be locked in on whatever self-discovery path you're on right now, for the rest of your life. If it's a good path, you're ok. If it's not tho, you're like an Elon Musk, who lacks empathy for self-inflection and will likely continue down this path forever, as the OP suggests, until Musk indeed realizes that he's a racist.
At that point, Musk can continue to be a racist, knowingly, in the open, or he can choose to change, like OP.
Some opinions are worth changing. Someone clearly thought OP was worth it, and it seems they were right.
So he had a “show” on X and now it’s been cancelled. But Don Lemon wasn’t banned from X, so the interview is on his personal account.
I guess I’m just not too informed, but what does it mean to have a “show” on X vs. just being a person who posts videos? Is there some kind of more monetization if you have an official “show” on there?
They have some kind of revenue sharing in place but I doubt it pays much seeing as the company is bleeding money and advertisers want nothing to do with it.
It didn't even get canceled because of the content he wanted wanted to produce, he was demanding like an $800 million dollar salary and a brand new Cyber Truck, lol.
I don't think many people equate Lemon with journalism, hard-hitting or otherwise. He's a pundit and a talking head, or at least was at CNN.
Here, it seems he did engage in some constructive interviewing. Which is a good thing. But he certainly does not have a meaningful history of such behavior.
Hopefully this willingness to directly criticize and question power will continue, and will apply to other global oligarchs as well in addition to Musk
I think the more likely explanation is that he’s a nepo baby who has never had to account for his actions, and who surrounds himself with people who tell him how great and smart he is.
Talking about racism and Elon saying he does not agree with it being a massive factor in the country and Don argues to the contrary only for them both to agree that the US has handled it the best is just laughable.