Even if Laurence Tribe didn’t fully realize what he was saying, it speaks to a mindset. When someone can blithely dismiss black women VP contenders as “cosmetic,” it’s more than just a misstatement. It’s a mindset.

Just because racism is unconscious doesn’t mean it isn’t racist.

The point of this is not to dunk on Laurence Tribe. The guy has already been dunked on today more times than a 5-foot-2 guy who somehow found his way into an NBA game. But it’s a moment that should cause all white people to think about our own mindsets and unconscious biases.

Whether we like it or not, most of us white people are raised with racist beliefs and ideas—some overtly, some unintentionally. The human brain is like a computer: garbage in, garbage out.

But if we honestly examine the garbage, maybe we can do a better job throwing it out.

The first step is admitting the garbage is there, in our heads. Maybe we didn’t put it there—in fact, we probably didn’t. But it’s there. If we refuse to see it and own it, it’s going to stay there—and sooner or later, it’s going to emerge from our mouths.

I’m not going to lie—I’ve had a few moments when some things came out of my mouth that shocked me and made me feel ashamed of myself. I think I’ve had fewer of them as I’ve grown older and wiser. But I’ve got to be honest with myself about it. We all do.

One of the big problems with white people is that we would rather be boiled in oil than admit, or even consider, that we might have some racist programming lurking in our minds. But failing to acknowledge it also means failing to deal with it. And it needs to be dealt with.

See, we know racism’s evil. And that’s why we’re afraid to confront it in ourselves. Because if we admit we have any racist reflexes or tendencies, then we have to think about whether those evil reflexes mean we’re really bad people deep down.

But we’ve got to get over our egos.

We’re in a moment when a lot of things that we’ve tried mightily to sweep under the rug are coming out. This is a moment when we can either choose to face up to our deeply ingrained racism—or fight like hell to sweep it back under the rug.

But we’ve just about run out of rug.