Similar small town experience here.

I grew up learning that racism is bad, and that everyone’s the same and I truly believed in that idea. I thought I was very not racist, but when I had a job that moved me to a few big cities for a few years, I realized that I had a different kind of racism.

It’s easy for all these small town white people to “never do anything racist” because they rarely encounter different people. When they do, they feel like they can pat themselves on the back, because they didn’t shout slurs at those people. But, I guarantee that when any one of them travels to the city and sees a group of black people standing outside of a gas station, they’ll keep driving until they find a “less shady neighborhood”.

These people don’t “feel” racist, and they don’t want to be racist, but they consistently reinforce racist laws because they have no understanding of how different cultures are affected by them.