FractalFrustration

So... I'm sort of at a loss of how to handle this particular situation, without making a fool of myself. There's someone in my cohort who takes active listening to an extreme level. During lectures/presentations/people talking, he has to verbally agree with nearly every word. It grates on me so badly, that sitting next to him in a three hour class gave me a pretty big headache. Does anyone have tips for somehow going Zen about this and tuning him out, or maybe tips for a conversation that could help it go away? If it matters, which I hope that it doesn't, but kind of think that it does... I'm white, and this colleague is black, and it makes me feel awful, but this behavior reminds me of movies with southern Black congregations agreeing with the preacher in church, and so I feel that if I let on that I'm annoyed, I'll be a racist.