Preferences can be racist, or the result of racism. I don't really care if individual people prefer one race over another so long as they can acknowledge beautiful people of all ethnicities.

Secondly, if a preference is just a preference, then why does it seem that 90% of people prefer a white person to a poc. If preferences were just that, and not informed by racism, then shouldn't they be more diverse? In my experience, an attractive white guy is 5 times more likely to get a response than an attractive light skinned guy and 10 times more so than an attractive dark skinned guy. I'm aware that this data is anecdotal, but it seems to hold true in many others experiences that I know.

People talk about race like it is some natural, definable thing, but it is not a biological reality. Even anthropologists, who for decades searched for ways to divide humans into races, had to concede that race as a biological reality was a myth. Hence, separating people by race and being attracted to people within these "races" is not some innate feature of human nature.

There’s a difference between a preference and a hard and fast rule. Tons of people "prefer" blonds but they don't date them exclusively, they're still more than willing to pursue relationships with brunettes. That never seems to be the case with racial "preferences." It always seems like people who claim to have a racial "preference" are actually making a hard and fast rule that they will not date someone of x race without exception.

They really muddle the waters with this "preference" word as though it's something they can't control and yet, in practice, their racial preference has entirely different rules than any of their other preferences so it's really easy to say yeah, it's probably straight up racism.