American here , a big problem is America is huge and somewhat segregated , not in the government forced way , but in the people settle someplace and stay there for generations with not real outside interactions . My family is from a small place in Indiana where VPElect Pence is from and my family had no interaction with people who weren ' t of Scottish heritage until they left for college . While that ' s the extreme , not meeting someone who isn ' t white is pretty common in middle American . I ' m in the military and at least 12 of my class in Basic training had never met a black or Hispanic person before joining . I wouldn ' t say they are racist , but it ' s hard to emphasize with people who are so different from your own experience , especially if you don ' t have the ability to look outside yourself to see how someone else ' s situation could have more difficulty than your own . So cognitively , you know lots of minority groups have been treated poorly throughout history , but you personally have never done it , and maybe you ' ve never experienced it , so it ' s hard to think it ' s something that goes on in any great length . Hopefully that ' s not too rambling of an explanation .