Fear, and ignorance.
Racism is nearly always triggered by a change in society, that puts a lot of people in a state of shock, where they fear, where life takes 'em. It usually starts with simple things, what'll happen to the neighborhood store, why's the post-office leaving our town.
From that people start looking for a cause, since there is none(change simply happens) they focus on a shallow, superficial feature, and blame that. Like skin-tone.
And they see people with a different skin-tone living in the city, where they do have a supermarket, and they do have a post-office, and they think there's a connection.
So no, it's not a bad habit, it's fear driven, and a 'mis-fired' target of blame.
It's basically a small-town fear, that gets out of hand.
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