> I don't see it as racist in any way, because it applies equally to everybody
Would you say the same thing about poll taxes?
The idea of ID laws is not inherently racist. It's the implementations that are problematic.
For example, one jurisdiction that got in trouble for its voter ID law (I forget which one) was found by the courts to have, when writing their law, did a study of what forms of ID voters had, found out which of those had the biggest differences between prevalence among whites and among blacks, and then picked as the allowed forms of ID those that would most favor whites and disfavor blacks.
Places that aren't as blatant about it (or at least aren't dumb enough to actually talk about it in legislative committees for which subpoenable records are kept...) often leave hints that their motive is racial. For example, they might limit the number of places that can issue IDs, and reduce their operating hours, so that a poor person without a car (more likely to be black than white) has to take a long bus ride there and back, and has to take time off work to do so. This can be a serious hardship. (Worse, it might take more than one trip if there is any problem with the supporting documentation for the ID application. Unsurprisingly, it has been found that minor errors that tend to be overlooked when a middle class white person applies are much more likely to derail things for a poor black person).
Another hint that their motives are suspect is that such efforts are usually accompanied by efforts to make it harder for minorities to vote that have nothing to do with ID, such as closing polling places in minority neighborhoods and limiting voting hours, or reducing the number of voting machines at minority neighborhood polling places so that lines will be long.
If voter ID laws were actually about preventing voter fraud rather than about suppressing legitimate votes from poor and minorities, they would be accompanied by changes to make it cheap and easy for people to get the appropriate ID.
Also, they would be about registration ID, not voting ID, since what little fraud there actually is usually takes place via absentee ballots.