Looks to me like white people get upset over the idea that we are racist because to many people, racist = bad person. And most people prefer to think of themselves as good people.

For me, the solution to that dillema is to realize that all white people in the USA are racist in the sense that we have biases that we absorbed from being raised in a white supremacist culture. It doesn't necessarily mean we're bad people, it just means we are all products of where we come from.

Maybe my outsider perspective as an autist gives me an advantage here. I can see how we are all raised with biases and conventions because I constantly struggle with these in order to survive in neurotypical society. Maybe most people don't see these like we don't see air even though it's all around us.

So I'm a racist because the internal biases I've absorbed. I'm also a good person because I'm (usually) kind and authentic and because I resist racism in myself as well as in society.

However, this line of thinking may be too complicated for some people. So the internal resistance: "I can't be racist -- racists are bad people and I'm not a bad person!" may continue for a whlie.