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One of the things that consistently makes our public discourse about race dumb is the tacit idea that “racist” is some sort of binary switch—you’re either totally cool, or in the Klan. Which is ridiculous as soon as you say it out loud, but seems to be a common premise.
Related: People often end up talking past each other because they’re using “racism” in two different ways. If it only refers to a self-consciously held & professed doctrine—ala “socialism” or “Lutheranism”—then yeah, that’s less common these days, albeit not nearly rare enough.
If we’re talking about a complex of mostly unarticulated background assumptions & attitudes, then (as the Avenue Q song has it) probably almost everyone’s got at least some lurking unexamined.
On the narrow view, racism (or sexism) is some recherché club you have to go out of your way to sign up for, like the Church of Satan. I think it’s more nearly true that (some degree of) racism & sexism are cultural defaults that require conscious effort to opt out of.
(For various reasons, we seem to be a little better about recognizing this with sexism. It’s a bit easier to get someone to acknowledge that, even if they don’t profess some explicit doctrine of male superiority, they may have a sexist habit of talking over women.)
I do think one contributing factor is a desire to have it both ways: People who have the more nuanced understanding of racism as a largely unconscious complex of attitudes, beliefs, & norms will still turn to the icon of the Klansman for rhetorical punch.
