Scarleteen

what do y'all think of it? I guess I can see why some people do it and how it can work if properly discussed and negotiated, but it still gives me that icky feeling

Probably obviously, the perspective on race play is going to be different for a white person than it is for people of colour, and also different according to whether the person is part of an oppressed racial/ethnic minority where they live.

There's always a lot of care to be taken when playing with power structures that exist in the society around us and which do real-world harm to some people. If we're part of the group with relative social power (eg in this case, white people) and we're wanting to use some of those same power relations in our sex life, it's very important that we ask ourself very carefully why we want to do that. Frankly, there are people (also in other kinds of power relations, like gender or disability) who seem to want to use their position in order to bully and/or abuse, and obviously that's a hornet's nest of no-good. It's also dodgy and no-good when a person with social power especially wants someone without it to do this kind of power-play: that's potentially exploitative and coercive.

Things are different when it's someone who doesn't have that type of social power (eg in this case, people of colour). As a white person, it's not my place to comment on the whys and why-nots of raceplay from this perspective! But for power-play that uses societal power structures generally, it can be used as a way of exploring, challenging or coming to terms with that power structure, and it can also harmfully re-create it. Sometimes those things can happen at the same time.

If you want to explore this topic more, I'd suggest seeking out various writings by people of colour who are into kink in some way. You'll likely find a range of different viewpoints, and a lot of nuance and complexity. It'll probably help you identify the ways in which your "icky" feeling is pretty solid and telling you something important, and help you figure out whether "eh, that seems kinda racist" or "not my thing, but I get where you're coming from" is more appropriate when you hear someone else talking about what they're into.