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I think it's different when it's your brother, who you've spent your whole life with, than when it's just someone you know. It's usually a silly statement, because race is one of the first things we notice about a person, and to pretend you don't is a little hypocritical. Now if it's your brother, you probably mostly think of his as your hero or a pain in the arse, even if he's a purple man from Mars.
To say you think of a person as your sorority sister/roommate/co-worker before you think of them as [insert race here] is one thing, as I don't think any of us want to be defined race-first - but to say that you somehow managed to never even notice their race (and somehow assumed they were the same race as you) strikes me as such a strenuous attempt to pretend that race doesn't matter that it's obvious that race does matter. It's implying that X race is somehow different from your race, and it also implies that that person has "risen above" their race to be like yours.
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Alpha Xi Delta
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