You would be suprised, at how much time I really spend thinking of this issue.
The reason it became so clear to me was that I moved into a kempton park neighbourhood (I am an economic migrant - house prices in Sandton were clearly beyond my reach) from sandton. My neighbour on the right side is this guy who drives a cortina, has a mullet, and had an attitude that stunk to high heavens, he also was openly racist (examples are too many to list and are not my focus at this moment). However, after some interactions he slowly melted, lost a few pre-conceived ideas about me and finally offered to take away my rubbish after another municipal delivery failure. This to me proved that interraction can result in some positive introspection. Look, I would not vouch for his attitude towards other blacks, but, I would like to believe that he might have learnt something positive about black people by interacting with me and my wife.
I myself have a very skeptical attitude towards white as you would have already concluded when issues of race crop up. However, as about 40% (due to UCT) of my few friends are white, I have realised that I tend to say some and give qualifiers when talking about white racism, because of my social experiance.
However, being close to my white friends has also exposed to me some unconcious prejudices that some white liberals have, but, I also think that it has also exposed them to irritating rants that some black people feel entitled to have from time to time, and an irritating sense of victimisation.
All in all I feel interaction heals and softens some of our rougher edges.
