I was just thinking how the internet is a place where our stereotypes play out without anything visual to back it up. That type/level of stereotyping is hard to admit to (which probably influences your difficulty getting solid responses).

For me: I'm with the herbsman, that it is generally more an accumulation of subtleties (almost intangibles) that influences my perception of a person's race. There are glaring examples as listed above (overdefefensiveness when no one is even being attacked, etc), but it is usually a finer grain than that.

I jokingly used BooDaah and abduhu earlier because they fit both of the above. Abduhu's (exceedingly knowledgable) religious stances pretty clearly define him as non-white to me (glaring example). Boodaah is more an amalgam of posts that indicate not only what he says he believes, but that there is integrity behind it (more subtle).

"I've been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech"--Being John Malchovich