The reason I don't want to think of everyone as human beings first is this:
Everyone is part of an arbitrary collective of traits (most of us here are white, male, American, etc) and each trait affects how we see each other. For example, women are seen as more caring, or bitchy if they have power, whatever. Those stereotypes are bad, and we can't ignore that they still happen.
The way we get rid of these biases things is by recognizing that when we think a woman is being bitchy (or, say a black man angry) it's likely to be our ingrained sexism (/racism). Seeing people as human beings first erases their identities and _removes the opportunity to fix our prejudices_. You and I are both prejudiced, we have to recognize that, and work to remove it from our minds.
Then, on the optimism/pessimism thing. Just keep on investigating the experiences of black people and I think you might become less optimistic about where we are.
It's sometimes tough to see how other people could be disadvantaged (that's called privilege). But when this list of benefits white people have over black people http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html#daily doesn't hold any more, _then_ we can get rid of black history month.
We can't overcorrect yet, because, broadly, our institutions themselves are still racist. (See http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/15/884649/-Why-there-s... or http://femmagazine.com/reverse-racism-and-reverse-sexism-don...) You don't punch someone in the face then repent with "I'm sorry that happened to you, but it's in the past, you need to heal". That's not true equality. True equality is you apologize, pay for their hospital bills and help them get their life back and recover from what was done to them in the past. That's a true "healing process". Some people see affirmative action as getting punched back, but it's not. Marginalized people's ancestors being mistreated puts them where they are now and we are _continuing_ to mistreat them by not helping them recover from that.
