The politically incorrect USA

I thought that racism is something that is far behind US people at least due to the fact they are so mixed in races for so long, not to mention the enforcing laws & system that keeps telling them that "multi-races is the power of this great nation" (Obama had this in a speech few days ago).

I've come to realize that racism was invented here and is here to stay. We do have lots of jokes about black people in Romania (mostly about how extra-long their penises are :), still we don't have any significant black population at all, so it's like silly joking about something we heard about and really don't have any direct experience with.

Racism seems to be present in two forms: whites are racist against any other colors, and any-other-colors are racist to whites mostly by being more permissive to their own race (positive discrimination I think it's called). I'm sure there are more variants to these but I think these are the most widespread forms.

Lemme give you a recent, maybe not so obvious example: "The Voice", the TV show, has as judges three white guys and one black, CeeLo.
They are all turned around and a voice starts to sing; it happens to be a very appealing black lady. Only CeeLo is pushing the button during the song and rest of them are automatically turned toward her at the end of the song.
The moment the three white guys see it's a black, nice looking lady on stage, they all look smiling, insinuating and overexcited to CeeLo and one of them says (whilst the others nod heavily in approbation):
"CeeLo! You're exactly the one you should have turn!"

I find it deeply racist. I mean, they clearly indicated that a nice black woman belongs naturally only to a black man, and they were not referring to her voice. No one of the white males thought: "Wow, a sexy woman! Yami!" they just thought: "Wow, a sexy black woman! She's good for CeeLo!".

One more random example: there is a commercial to a drink that is giving you energy, SK energy. It implies that black dudes are involved in drug dealing activities. Also, the radio commercial for the same "drink" annoyed a few.

Now, one example from the other side of the racism:
I joked with JJ, (my American immersion specialist, her blog is here), greeting her once: "Wazzup my nigga'", in a try to sound like Jackie Chan in the Rush Hour movie.
She got dead serious and explained to me that I could get myself killed using this phrase in certain neighborhoods, not far away from here. I was aware of the implications because this is what that movie actually tries to make a point for, I just teased her to see if the movie is exaggerated because I couldn't believe it is so bad.
Her reaction and her confirmation that the black people indeed use this expression when talking to each other on a daily basis, but they don't accept it from any another race, confirmed that really there is another side of the racism.

Let's be frank: people are careful with other races "by design". In all our minds there is a flag that comes up if we're getting involved in any way with an individual of different race (some have a small on-top-of-ice-cream flag, some a big one on a pole; depends on lots of previous life conditions).
It's a matter of built-in protection to the unknown, a reticence we all have to the "new". We generally mask racism because, as humans, we can control ourselves and make us look like we don't mind. However in stressful or "fast reaction needed" situations the inner reality creeps out easily through the civilization mask.

A good counter-example to this though, is my 7 y.o. kid who was in the situation to talk about a movie. He was referring to the only one black guy in that movie scene but, instead of saying "that black guy" (that would have been completely acceptable in my view as being a quick and accurate pointer), he naturally described him as: "the guy with the blue shirt".

This could actually mean that we are born non-biased. Then, something happens on the way to adulthood that makes us particularly aware of races. Maybe we tag other races too easily, based on individual bad experiences.

Anyway, in the year 2012, in USA, the cradle of "anti-racism" and the inventors of "politically correctness", if an outsider like me can easily find public examples of racism, something went terribly wrong in here.