To me it seems that this connotation is very deeply embedded in Western culture (but not only Western culture, compare for example yin and yang) and doesn't actually have much to do with race, and more with day and night, light and darkness and the fact that humans are not a nocturnal species and darkness can be dangerous to us.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism this is traceable to the Ancient Near East and listed in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites for example, so it goes much further back than the Atlantic slave trade.

I do not think that it would be possible to rip this metaphor out of our thinking.

By the way, a really great linguistic book about how much of our thinking is in systematic metaphors in general, is "Metaphors We Live By", by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

That's a connotation. Another one is that black you cannot see, white you can. Which does have some grounding in physics. And no, absolutely nothing to do with race.

Wouldn't it make more sense then to change the name of the race? "Blacks" -> "browns" or something... (and it would also be more physically accurate... same with "whites" -> "yellows" or "roses")

Which has nothing to do with race, and is heavily rooted in "light" vs. "shadow" mythology. In India it's the other way around, Asia has Ying and Yang.

Changing these words is a feel good thing, that does nothing to address our internal biases, prejudices, and racism. It wastes time that could be spend on writing your senator, politician, or being active in a political party.

It's a zero effort, zero stakes thing, that makes privileged people feel personal accomplishment, while allowing them to relax into complacency.

"I make a million a year, and work for a company that makes money off of algorithmically radicalising people into right wing conspiracy theories, but I don't use the word white- and black-list anymore, because it reminds me of race. I did my part!"

Yes, but it is worth noting that this did not originally refer to skin color, but more to the association in our culture of black with death.

Yes, but I don't see the correlation to any race.

black is bad everywhere, probably because of its physical properties. ditto for white.

Those who wish to see a racial relation are just racists, and racists should not be fed.