Stopping racism is possible but extremely difficult

Emotions are weird, irrational things. Can you really be said to hate something if you hate yourself for hating it ? Do you really hate something if your emotion is a conditioned response ? I don't know, however, for a practical demonstration of using conditioned responses (and other tactics) to overcome hatred, see :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/dgjzJEy2nQF
Albeit that uses highly controlled tactics that are simply not possible to reproduce on larger scales (and it's a sample of one, with all the major caveats that implies). Hence this real-world observational study is much more ambiguous. And you cannot simply talk people out of ideologies. If there's anything that can break ideology, it's a visceral, emotive experience, not someone lecturing you.

The goal of stopping hate and helping former white supremacists lead more virtuous lives is certainly well intentioned, but there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of any initiative’s methods to reverse racism. Life After Hate, which formed as a nonprofit in 2011 and claims more than 30,000 supporters, says it has helped more than 100 people conquer their biases. Ending racism, it turns out, isn’t as simple as cutting personal ties or deciding to stop hating certain groups of people.

Shannon Brown, for example, admits that there are still things that “trigger” her prejudices: gay people, black people who listen to loud rap music, multiracial families. Something might set her off, and “I just trigger into that indoctrinated kind of mindset,” Brown said, her brain calling forth a racial slur, even though she knows that such thoughts are wrong. “I might just see something like an interracial couple, and it’ll flip and then flip back real fast,” Brown said. “Sometimes I can control it, and sometimes it’s just on impulse".

Fighting the hatred inside her head can be exhausting, Brown said. Sometimes it’s just easier to let her old racist mindset reassert control. “Even 20 years later, it’ll flip the switch,” Brown said. “And it sounds terrible to say it, but it actually feels good.”

According to research by Peter Simi, most former white supremacists do not experience a sudden change of heart. In fact, moral reasons fall to the bottom of the list. Instead, as was the case with Shannon Brown, the decision to leave a hate group is almost always driven by a personal stimulus: a social or family feud, a divorce, an abusive relationship, a split between rival factions, a public shaming, a run-in with the legal system. The choice is rarely brought on by empathy for people they have been conditioned to despise.

Counseling former extremists about their childhood, as a treatment method on its own, will not work. Simply exposing them to diverse people won’t do the job either. Any solution will be more complex, because hate is more complex. It’s a socially, historically, and institutionally bred behaviour that embeds in the psyche. Solving the problem is not a matter of just getting someone to leave a hate group. Hate and racism become part of their core identity, Simi said, and for many who leave hate behind socially, abandoning it psychologically is a much harder process.

https://newrepublic.com/article/152299/white-supremacists-learn-hate