Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they're all keeping their racist opinions to themselves, I might waste a bunch of time being their friends I have several friends who I know hold some less-than-sociable opinions, and they do tend to keep them to themselves. I don't quite know how to frame what I'm about to say, but I feel it's equally dickish to think that becoming someone's friend is a "waste of time" just because you don't agree with their op…
To be fair being racist is more than an opinion, it demonstrates your character. It reveals part of who you are and the framework with which you deal with the world. I agree that it is valuable knowledge in determining who you want to create lasting bonds with.
By that standard the older the man, the worse he is and you'll arrive at the conclusion that nearly everyone flawed character in the olden days when racism was mainstream.
But we need not even go any further than Charles Darwin:
"The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said."
"Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping a basket of sea urchins, and a Howard or Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakspeare. Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest graduations."
http://heretical.com/darwin/darwin4.html
Sources cited at the bottom of that page.