Here is an analogy: If you are not a pet owner, have never really had pets in your home, and you walk into a home with a good amount of dogs and cats, you will notice a distinct odor. The owners of the pets and their kids likely will not because they have lived with it for a number of years. You can substitute the pets for people who cook foods that are uncommon and have strong odors. When I was a kid, my grandmother cooked with a lot of chile (chee le). When she was cooking my cousins and I would run outside because our eyes would start burning and we would cough. My uncles and aunts would be inside talking and laugh at us. As I got older in high school I would sometimes bring friends over after school to visit. She would be cooking and I would be talking to her, my friends would start coughing and would have to go outside. I had gotten used to it.
All of us, every one of us who have had access to media and popular culture in the United States have grown up with racially biased messaging. Messaging biased toward acceptance of a racial hierarchy, towards norms that are geared toward White people in general and White Men specifically. You can see in some of the research on self image that children of color were shown dolls of different colors and told to say which was "good" and which was "bad" and a significant amount chose the White doll as "good" and the doll that looked like them as bad. Generalizations are typically not good things, but the reality is that we all get messages about what is "normal" and what is "other". There are many of us who actively fight against the messaging and try to live lives of true equality, but we have all seen it, it is in us whether we can even consciously acknowledge it or not.
When racism is called out, and you belong to the group that is being called out on racial bias, there is a defensive reaction. "Me? I'm not racist! I have friends who are black! I don't do that..." We see it here on DU, especially during the time when the term "wypipo" had been introduced. I am Mexican-American, I have been the target of racism and discrimination. I was also exposed to plenty of racism from within my own family toward other groups especially Black people and Asian groups that lived in proximity to us. I personally reject the racism, but I have to acknowledge where I came from, everyday, or else I can easily slip back into that mindset.
When you do not have to see race in your personal life it is easier to not think about it, not consider it and think that it is abnormal to focus on it. When it becomes an issue, then it becomes an irritant and some people push it away rather than really examine themselves honestly to see if they intentionally or not, contribute to it.
Trump, because he is a narcissist, likely thinks that people agree with his racist ideas (which he probably really thinks are not racist). He just lacks insight. Most people in the US are not overtly racist. The danger is that we all carry around racial bias and we do not like to consider that so when there are actual active racists who are signaling, there will be those of us who call it out and stand, but there will be a lot of people who just tune out because they don't want to deal with it. That is what the GOP is banking on.
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