Was she a RACIST and I just didn't realize it?

Very long ago and far away I had an MIL who asked me why I liked to get a tan? She said she thought white skin was so much more attractive. I just shrugged it off at the time. Now my then-husband was a Sephardic Jew and they naturally have a more tan skin than pasty whites do. I guess that's why I didn't think anything of it. She did not have pasty white skin.

If one finds white pale skin untouched by the sun more attractive appealing prized does that automatically make him/her a racist?

I asked a question awhile ago about this. Prizing white skin had nothing to do with being a racist in the long ago ancient days. It had everything to do with social status. Laborers who worked in the sun had darker skin than the wealthy privileged class and so white skin was an emblem of high social status. The patrician not the peasant. Are they two entirely separate things or did the original dislike of dark skin morph into something far more sinister and evil? I dunno.