It doesn’t matter if you think of yourself as progressive and a defender of the proverbial underdog, if you insist on seeing others primarily via the lens of race and race alone—if the category is what you see and what matters when interacting with individuals—you are a racist.
Don’t let anyone tell you that only one group of people can be X and everyone else is therefore exempt. That doesn’t obtain in any aspect of human experience, why would it obtain with regard to racism?
And frankly I will say that the above—seeing others primarily through the group category—is a much more tangible and obviously objectionable form of racism than simply failing to actively oppose invisible systems of oppression, yet it is given comparatively short shrift today.
