Very few people would call themselves racist, and getting called out on racist behavior tends to elicit defensiveness. This reflex is so culturally ingrained that its scripts are practically punchlines: “I don’t see color.” “Some of my very best friends are Black.”
Donald Trump — the same president to deride Central American migrants as “animals” and who threatened martial law to stamp out nationwide protests against anti-Black police brutality — has declared himself “the least racist person there is.” As the writer Vicky Mochama points out in Canada’s Globe and Mail, with self-avowed racists in such short supply, one might conclude that racism magically perpetuates itself.