People don't like to admit that they have racist ideas. It's a big harsh word and when you say "Well that's racist," the person hears "You're racist and you're a bad person and because you're racist in this way that means you must also be racist in every single other way possible," which is how "But I have black friends" or "But I voted for Obama" or whatever comes up. People see it as "you are totally evil."

Holy shit you're absolutely right. While having a few drinks with my dad and his girlfriend a while back, we somehow got on the topic of Haiti. His girlfriend started spewing nonsense about Haitians in the U.S.--things like how they come here, don't work, collect welfare, and a lot of other nonsense. Eventually she just comes out and says "Haitians are lazy." We start to have it out, until she starts pulling the "well are you calling me a racist?" and I had to reply "yes, yes I'm calling you a racist." It was like she baited me to cross some line in the sand that removes any civility from the discussion, and the rest of the night turned into my dad trying to defend her from this accusation, tell me I'm way out of line, and justify how "she's talking about culture, not race."

I think the thing is, racist people have been kind of backed into a corner. They used to be able to just come out and say the things they felt about other people, and now they have to tiptoe around around people's sensibilities by using dog whistle terminology to provide plausible deniability for when they get caught. It's like all they got from the civil rights movement and exposure to other cultures is a sense that they need to mimic human decency, and not because racism is bad, but because it's really bad to be called a racist.