Denial

 While I was watching a documentary on a mosque being established somewhere in the deep, ignorant, Pentecostal South, it dawned on me that many people say the exact opposite of what they actually think-the kicker is that they honestly don't believe that they're being dishonest or contradicting themselves! The residents of this town tried to prevent the building of this Mosque  by citing concerns over traffic, the ecological impact of coffin-less burial on the local watershed, as well as the rapid approval of the building permit. They conflated Islam with a radical interpretation of Sharia law and worried that the mosque would be a training ground for future terrorists. They said all of this, but at the same time insisted that they respected the right of Muslims to worship and practice their religion. One reactionary protester drawled "We don't hate'em. We just don't want'em around here." Another patrician lady, a town matriarch from old money, gently acknowledged that she knew many good Muslim people, but later conceded that she was worried the mosque would lead to a society like the Taliban's, where women were mutilated by having acid thrown on their faces for not covering up. If this seems off topic to you, just consider how many cops who taze and rough up suspects/victims will rationalize it  by saying that they're just doing their job, and their actions have nothing to do with racism or any other form of bias. In this case, a 12 year old girl gets tazed as a result of local yokel police investigating her mother for unpaid traffic tickets. This didn't happen as the result of "mom's" car being pulled over. For some reason, some presumably white people, who would probably tell you they weren't racist, called the police, who were "just doing their job," and set them loose on a mother and her 12 year old daughter. As a self described expert, it is my belief that police officers usually don't lie in wait for people at the mall, hoping to bust them over unpaid fines for speeding.