I don't think there's any innate racism, but people do tend to be hostile towards those who they see as "not of their own tribe". This view of the problem would suggest that racism is the result of people having a very narrow world-view, where they don't recognise many other people as being "like them".
This would seem to be a solvable problem. We can break down communication barriers. The internet is already transforming the world in this way, and we've already come so far in the past few decades. Surely we can keep going, until nobody lives in a small corner of the world that's isolated from the rest of us.
The internet does help break down communication barriers, but I'm not sure how much it really helps when it comes to racism.
It's so easy to talk with someone on the internet without knowing anything about their ethnic background. In fact I have no idea whether you're black, white, Jewish, Indian, whatever. So if I were a chauvinistic white supremacist, I could just pretend that everyone who writes thoughtful comments on HN is a white dude. This contrasts sharply with the real world, where you can't help noticing a person's gender and skin color before you ever exchange a word with him or her.
The internet also helps people erect strong barriers that might otherwise have been too weak to sustain. Stormfront.org helps turn potential neo-Nazis into actual neo-Nazis, helps them unite despite their geographical dispersion, empowers them to publicly boast their bigotry, and worst of all, gives them a comfortable environment where they never have to confront any other opinion. The fragmentation of online communities keeps prejudices alive in the gaps.
This would seem to be a solvable problem. We can break down communication barriers. The internet is already transforming the world in this way, and we've already come so far in the past few decades. Surely we can keep going, until nobody lives in a small corner of the world that's isolated from the rest of us.