Ringer, you're mixing arguments. "Promotes less racism" is not the same as "To understand everything is to be completely non-racist". They are two distinctly different propositions. And while I agree with you that the latter is idealistic and ignores human nature, I do support the former view.

The explanation is simple, and has effectively already been given above: One of the causes of racism is fear and mistrust. Understanding (and education) reduces that mistrust and fear and therefore works towards eliminating one of the causes of racism. It doesn't wipe it out, it doesn't eradicate it - but it does reduce it.

I have personal experience of this from my own early contacts with Turkish colleagues (being Greek myself, and therefore taught at school to fear and mistrust the Turks). As I got to know them better that mistrust eventually disappeared, to the point where I felt very comfortable visiting Istanbul some 70-80 times and living there a total of 1 year or more (albeit in bits).

This made me think. And later I used it very effectively in forging together single teams:
a) In BeNeLux, with Dutch and Belgians (who actually have a deeper mistrust of each other than the Greeks and Turks) in 1990-93. 80 people working happily with each other, cooperating, recognising and using each other's strengths and covering for each other's weaknesses. That work environment "union" led to a number of cross-border friendships and 2 marriages!
b) in the East Mediterranean, I repeated this with the Greek, Turkish and Cypriot teams in 1996-98.

The process involved getting them to spend time together. Not just in meetings, but also in day-long (and week-long) workshops; and getting them to work in each other's offices, deal with each other's customers and each other's problems. They soon realised that their common points were many more thatn the differences. Then they lowered their guard enough to start understanding those differences and their causes. Within a year they were proud to be spearheading a cross-border unification that preceded the company's overall efforts (in the case of BeNeLux) or any friendly overtures by governments (in the case of Greece-Turkey).

There's your proof. I can give you names, telephone numbers, email addresses for cross-checking - I still keep in touch with many of them, and they would gladly confirm the above facts.