Search Results: he stares at me and then ignores me

To sum it up, I told my friend I liked him on the train. He simply said "okay". That crushed me and I cried that night. For the next two weeks, we went along as if nothing happened - until one day on the train, he casually mentioned that I told him I liked him. I thought he was going to go somewhere with that, but he just went on to talking about something else. I was so confused so later that night, I told him to give me a straightforward answer. Apparently, he wanted to just be friends and didn't think he reacted negatively. I'm not going to lie, I cried again. Anyways, because I was being emotional, I asked him why. It took him two days to drop me a message telling me it was because he had a preference for lighter skinned girls. I was genuinely shocked at his message (mainly because I didn't think me being black would be a problem for him since he and his parents both grew up in the most diverse neighborhood in town), so I waited a day to reply back. I told him that I found it disappointing that race was such a significant factor for him and that it's okay for him to have a preference, but it is and will always be a dick move to tell someone that their skin colour is the problem. I pretty much ended our friendship there. Earlier in the week, he's been giving me sad glances and I'm guessing he's been trying to find the opportunity to talk to me, but I honestly didn't want anything to do with him. I've caught him staring at me on occasions, but after a while, if I was anywhere near him, he refused to look up at me. One of my closest guy friend has been telling me to talk to him, because he thinks maybe his religion (Mormon) is the reason he rejected me, but I can't see anything positive coming out of it. I feel like there's a 98% chance he's going to try to explain why I wasn't good enough for him and then end up hurting me again. Should I take the risk and message him or just continue ignoring him?