I don’t know how to ask this question…
When people are like, “I’m not racist, my best friends are black!” People make fun of that like, you can still be racist and manage to have close black friends. I dunno, I guess that’s true. But I’ve known some true blue racists and they would never keep black friends, or whatever race they are against. Why would a racist person keep friends of a race they didn’t like?
there is more to racism than literally hating everyone of a certain race. Using a friend, who is a person of color, as a trophy to prove how not-racist one is does not exonerate that person from their racist behavior. Using a friend as a trophy is dehumanizing. PoC are not props to be used to prove how you are x,y, and z.