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Now we're entering into a debate of whether perfectly rational behaviour should be eschewed in favour of virtue signalling.
You think the desire to protect individuals from racism is merely virtue signalling?
Only if (as in this case) it discards the other side of the debate, which is the desire to protect individuals from harm predominantly perpetrated by a particular demographic.
That's just the racist side. You're quite simply defending racism. Racists are still morally culpable even if their prejudices are statistically true, because it harms individuals who don't happen to adhere to those stereotypes.
I'm asking how far we should go to 'not be racist' on principle, when doing so causes measurable material harm.

Is your answer genuinely "I would let myself and those I care about suffer an unlimited amount of harm in order to avoid the possibility of inflicting an unfair prejudice on any individual"? Because according to your stated position, anything less is "defending racism".

And I strongly suspect that, if it were put to the test, you really would not accept arbitrary harm in order to "not defend racism". And if so, then you're publicly declaring that you hold a 'virtuous' position, when in reality you do not. And that is the definition of 'virtue signalling'.

Except you're defending racist signs that ostensibly protect people from rude behavior, not "unlimited amount of harm", so this is all a straw man.

Of course there's a practical limit to tolerance. This isn't it.

"Now we're entering into a debate of whether perfectly rational behaviour should be eschewed in favour of virtue signalling."

Said he, before proudly hanging his "No Irish" sign on the front door of his shop.

Actually, no, I do this too. If a person of $demographic_X, wearing stereotypical $demographic_X clothes, approaches me at a train station, I know they're going to ask me for money, and then abuse me when I don't give them any, but I still give them a friendly greeting and listen to whatever they have to say, purely because the one time that one person from that demographic who isn't like that approaches me, I want to make sure I treat them like a human being.

But this is a mild example that doesn't cost me much. I think it's an important thought experiment to figure out just how far you'd go and how much loss you'd accept to preserve that self-image of being "a good person."