Do you mean that most people are highly selective about the race of their potential mate? If this is the case, I don't think that this is racist. Besides, scientists are humans too, I doubt there would be much of a difference.
Racism doesn't need to involve blathering idiots who want to burn your house down, all it takes is someone to treat another person worse because of their race.
Which is to say, we're all at least a little bit racist. One of the greatest lies of modern society is that racism is somehow exceptional, or intrinsic to a character, when it is in fact highly contextual and can be brought out of anyone.
Race in dating is very heavily influenced by popular perceptions of particular races, including stereotypes - that someone won't give a black person the time of day even if they are articulate and hit other criteria is racist, though the fault here seems to lie more with society than the individual.
(I do agree that everyone is capable of racism even if they aren't going round lynching people, just not that racial preference when it comes to sex is always about racism.)
For example: I'm attracted to slim women. But some of my best friends are curvy. I'm not discriminating against curvy women; it's just that I find the skinny ones more attractive, without any rational reason for it.
And this is even more true for race - there may very well be people who are biologically wired to dislike certain skin colors, but IMO they are well into the minority. Race in dating has much more to do with cultural perceptions of race than any evolutionarily hard-wired perception.
In any case though:
> " it's just that I find the skinny ones more attractive, without any rational reason for it."
Which makes you, I guess the word would be... weightist?
The whole point of my post isn't to point at people and go "you monster! you won't date black people!", it's to point out that even subconsciously influenced racism is racism, and the net effect for the target individual is the same, regardless of if you're "simply like that without rational reason" or if you actively and consciously dislike them.
The fact that we've been programmed by culture and circumstance to discriminate against a certain group doesn't make it our fault, but it is still discrimination at the end of the day.