There are many potential causes of racism, one of the most promising is biases. We all have personal biases that are shaped based on who we are as a person, the environment you grew up in, and the stereotypes that you experience as a kid. Majority of kids raised in racist towns (prevalent in the south) often grow up racist much like how those who grow up in churches that preach against homosexuality often grow up homophobic and many kids who grow up being abused become abusers. Another cause of racism is linked to the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is defined as of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings. Ad marketing systems know everything about the subconscious mind, and they know how to manipulate it. They use enticing images, celebrity endorsement, slogans, and most of all repetition to make you favor their product over others. When you are exposed to something enough it integrates into your subconscious, and whether you know it or not it might be in there and is able to make you assume things about different ethnic groups. This can be detrimental to relations between different ethnic groups that may already have tension between them. Just because it's hard to control our subconscious doesn't mean that we can't, if we feed our mind enough information it will enter our subconscious mind. A serious problem today is that we don't like to talk about racism at all. This can lead to ignorance about what is and isn't racist, this can cause people to be racist purely on accident, this is referred to as ignorant racism. In today's society, it is especially prominent because everyone is afraid to talk about the problem of racism as it is a very sensitive piece of subject matter. Of course, we can change this by talking about it and making it a public and open issue.