One of the biggest contributing factors to the perpetuity of racism is fear.
We are afraid of the other.
We are afraid of the stereotypical traits and behaviors of people "not like us" that we have absorbed and chosen to believe with little reflection or examination of their veracity.
We are afraid of all that we imagine we will lose if were to no longer cling to the alleged comforts that come with racism: physical safety, psychological safety, materials possessions, power and privilege and status and social capital.
We are afraid we will lose our friends, access to opportunities, money, our job.
These are all invalid fears, but we cling to them anyway. Rather than shape a new narrative for ourselves, our communities, our societies, our nations, our world, we perpetuate old played-out narratives that have been told for centuries.
Depending on the context, we sometimes add new racist twists to these new narratives. And sometimes we don't even bother to change the old racist tropes and motifs.
We are afraid of vulnerability and connection and justice and equity.
We think we are more comfortable in this reality, never realizing that sustaining this reality is about as comfortable as swimming in a pool of lime juice after paper cutting our entire body.
That's what fear does. It makes us irrational. It makes us racist.