The fact did not occur to me until later in life, but the racial superiority viewpoint I grew up with was not at all restricted to just my own family or immediate neighbors.
The general idea was that White People were a master race, and non-whites were so inferior as to be barely within the human species -- but, of course they were human, because natural selection and human evolution were "dammd lies."
I'm trying to recall when I met the first person who thought of all human beings as equals -- maybe the Roman Catholic priest I encountered during my high school years. He was an Irish transplant, sent to ignorant, far-off Idaho on a mission of mercy. He actually spoke of Indians and Blacks as being just like "everybody else!"
My father's view of white supremacy was so deep and ingrained that he never abandoned it for a moment -- not even when one son married a Jew and another son married an Indian.
So, the progression away from such teachings can be rather abrupt -- can occur within one decade of a single generation. I think that what it takes is for us to encounter an alternate possibility -- and probably at a fairly young age.
My wife, who grew up in a heterogeneous community, surrounded by all sorts of different kinds of people, can never begin to understand my own southern Idaho upbringing: 100% White, and of that population, the vast majority Anglo-Saxon -- with a fairly large minority of Scandinavians and an occasional German.
....all of whom had been told by their ward patriarchs that they were of the literal bloodline of Joseph the son of Jacob.
"I think that what it takes is for us to encounter an alternate possibility -- and probably at a fairly young age."
That's what (I think) happened with my Dad. Grew up in the South, but loved Jazz from age 9 on. At 14 he was living in D.C. and hanging with a crowd that would have made some of his family cringe.
Now my Mom, who also grew up in the South in a definitely racist family - I have no idea how she ended up a seriously vocal opponent of racism as far back as I can remember.
I could never get a firm handle upon what my parents "racism" actually boiled down to.
They were not segregationists -- would not have joined the KKK or spent their nights "lynching" the "undesirables." I doubt that they would have contributed to any overt efforts to deny the vote to people of color, or to deny legal civil rights, etc.
I'd guess that hard-core racism has some of that political aspect intertwined with the belief in white superiority. It's one thing to tell you kids not to ever keep company with "those people," but it is obviously something extra, when those same kids are taught how to burn down Black churches in Birmingham, with other little kids there at Sunday school.
Maybe that's what rescued my own independent thinking at an early age -- my not having been schooled in overt acts against "those others" when following my father to John Birch Society 4th of July picnics. Had I stuck around those hate group folks a little longer, I might have received some training on how to suppress minority voting, or "silent" protests against Black-owned businesses, etc.
"It's one thing to tell you kids not to ever keep company with "those people," but it is obviously something extra, when those same kids are taught how to burn down Black churches in Birmingham, with other little kids there at Sunday school."
I'd say that's a big difference. Even given my upbringing, I have to admit I react differently to people based on race. On some level I've been programmed to see a black person instead of just a person.