Racism and Christianity

I have a friend who describes herself as a “disinterested agnostic”. For several years I have tried to understand where she is coming in terms of her worldview. She is quite reluctant to talk to me about these things, which is perhaps understandable. She has been known to make some rather strong assertions regarding morality — for example, female circumcision, treatment of women in Afghanistan, and “white-flight” from schools that apparently have too many Muslims and indigenous attendees.

Recently she wrote about the latter on her blog, to which I responded:

I don’t personally like racism, and certainly feel emotionally for those who suffer at the hands of others, simply because their appearance is different due to minute differences in genetic coding.

However, at an intellectual level, I find it much more difficult to reject racism as evil. Indeed, to believe racism is actually evil, I would have to believe first that evil actually exists.

But how do I get to this realization?

If you are thinking: “what a moron — of course evil exists”, then convince me as to how you arrived that that conclusion.

Stating “this is evil” or “that is evil” is only making assertions, and even racists are good at making assertions. For an assertion to carry any weight, it requires a foundation, lest it just be merely an empty assertion.

So what do you think? Does she have a case, or is she being inconsistent with her worldview? Is she making baseless assertions? Or am i just being too hard on her?