Its only a minority. Most are good people. A couple of my closest friends in the US have a much darker tan than myself. Once we worked through the initial language barrier all was good.
Initially one of them thought I was a huge racist. He finally got up the courage to ask me why I kept making comments about "blacks". Confused I asked him what me meant. He then quoted something that I said moments earlier. I said "blokes", not "blacks". He then said "whats a bloke?".
We had a laugh about all the things that I had said and what he though I meant. A lot of our conversations were much clearer after that.
