Mom, I swear I'M NOT RACIST!

So, I was working as a temp at a local car dealership today. I'd worked there a few times before, so I knew most of the salesmen I was working with. A good deal of them are my age (mid 20's) or act like it.

I hadn't worked at the dealership in a few weeks, so one of my sales buddies, Ben, came up to say hi to me. Just so you know, Ben us a mid to late 20 year old, vivacious guy who happens to be Mexican and has a very dark complexion. He's also been out in the sun all summer selling cars. Well, today, he was wearing a light khaki shirt with a brown patterned tie and brown pants. I thought it was cute how well he coordinated his outfit, so I said, "Ben! You're BROWN today!!"
I tried to put on the breaks as the words were leaving my lips, but I wasn't fast enough to catch my runaway tongue.

Ben looks down at his outfit, then at his hand and says, "I'm always brown."
"No no! That's not what I meant!" I tried to redeem my accidentally questionably racist remark when Ben pulls over a Finance Manager, Mo (short for Mohammad, who is African American and Muslim, I think) to retell the story, in hopes of further humiliation.

"At least she didn't tell me I was BLACK today," quipped Mo over his shoulder as he walked on to his destination.

I was quite mortified for the rest of the day, and Ben made sure I didn't forget it. Which actually made me paranoid for the rest of the day. You see, there was a new African American sales man that needed to write something with a black pen at my desk. The first time he did it, he left his pen and I put it in my desk so no one would take it. When he came back, I pulled out the black pen from my pile of red ones and said, "Oh, you probably want the BLACK one." OH no! Would he think I thought he only wanted to write in black because he was black? No, Adriane. You're fine. It's ok. He won't notice. Just keep quiet.
A second later, I was joking about how I almost stole his black pen because people kept stealing my black pens, so all I had left was red ones. Before I knew it, I had the urge to blurt out, "want one of these COLORED ones?" Luckily my brain and social awareness caught up w/ my runaway tongue. I couldn't look him in the eye for the rest of the day. Damn you Ben!