RE: Racism is a religion I do not (and will never) subscribe to
I am not sure the author of this piece has a clear understanding of racism, racial prejudice, or just how pervasive many of these ideologies are. Generally, when speaking academically or socioeconomically, "racism" means the way in which various power structures discriminate against groups of people based on their race in a negative and detremental way. Policies like redlining, police brutality and it's lack of punishment, and exclusionary governmental tactics that see people in camps, reservations, ghettos, etc. "Racial prejudice" is typically used to note certain people not getting along due to racially motivated reasons or poorly thought out stereotypes. Colloquially, we use the word "racism" to describe every type of racial discrimination, but are seldom looking to be exceptionally accurate when doing so.
A major aspect of racism is "power" for instance, and it isn't mentioned at all. Also, there seems to be a greater focus on who is or is not racist without enough focus on the conceit of the article that Racism is a religion. Also, the breakdown of "true racisim" and "not true racism (I'll call it 'fake racism") is not described well enough to help me understand how or why the author broke things down in that way.
As far as beauty standards are concerned, due to a long history of racism, plunder, and racial profiteering in the united states, beauty standards are absolutely affected by racism. People are able to like who they like for whatever reasons they wish, but excluding peoples of a different race from one's romantic interests is most definitely racially motivated and prejudiced.
In other words, it's not "not racist" just because preference is involved. It's still racism. It just not as or affecting as something like burning crosses or lynch mobs.
Racism is about more than what people think, and very much about how they act and what they do. Because the most racially prejudiced things to me are how people don't really read books on or study racism enough to give themselves a greater understanding of it before commenting as if they were authorities. Books like The People's History of The United States, the work of Ta-nihisi Coates for the Atlantic and his own book "Between The World and Me", and several other Black and Brown Authors do a great job of outlining race, racism, and the insidious networks and thought processes that keep it around and en vogue.
I am the author. Of course I know how prevalent racial prejudice is. It is particularly prevalent in the United States (more than in any other country in my experience so far). But in a country such as Thailand for example it is known that lighter skin is a common beauty standard. That beauty standard has nothing to do with race and more to do with what that population currently finds to be in fashion in terms of physical traits.
When you mention redlining and legal policies that is systemic racism. That is perhaps the worst of racism because it's built into the law. That kind of racism may or may not be the result of racists but what I do know is that for various reasons (power grabs etc) people look to create scapegoats in society. So I do not know 100% whether people who back for example "for profit prisons" are racist or if they just own shares in these industries. It is not as easy to determine the motivations of people when economic incentives are promoting certain creations of certain kinds of laws.
In my opinion racism is based entirely on how the person thinks. A person who is racist must adopt the ideology of race to even be considered a racist. A person can be ignorant, create bad laws, and generate negative consequences, without even being an actual racist. A person can do it out of greed and simply use race to justify a power grab as I said before. A person in power may use race ideology to divide the people out of power as a means of justifying their own position of being in power.
For example an old white male could use race ideology to justify why white people such as himself deserve to be in power. Suddenly it's natural law and justified by something such as IQ, or by God who for whatever reason chose him for divine rule. If you look back at history you will find that royalty used these similar justifications (God says I should be in power). Then of course these individuals promoted Christianity and religion as this helped them to maintain and justify their position of power.
Racism helps certain people to justify the unfair advantages they may be receiving. This goes on both sides actually because you can be of any race and receive an unfair advantage merely because of your race. The point is that in a world without race ideology then everyone should be given a fair chance without any group being given an unfair advantage due to perceived stereotypes (Blacks good at sports, Asians good at math, or whatever).
In terms of History of the United States I am well aware of the past. I'm more interested in how do we change the future. We agree race ideology is a bad idea so what can we do about this? Certain people will seek to benefit from any ideology that is in place to maintain or grow their power. This is true of religion, ideology, etc where if a certain religion is popular in a part of town then the politician may befriend the priests/monks.
I suggest you travel more and see if this is true in practice. There is not a lot of data which reveals what goes on in the subconscious of people who decide not to date certain people. In my own opinion though I doubt 100% of people who have preferences are also racist. So there are people who aren't racist who still have preferences and how do you know which group of people make up the majority of the people who for example refuse to date black people for example?