About a year ago, a harried traveler, rushing through an unfamiliar airport to make a connecting flight, stopped for a quick restroom break. He ducked in where he saw the sign, but when he looked around, he was immediately seized by a sense that there was something not quite right about this restroom. Then he realized what was missing: urinals.

But the traveler was in a hurry, so he didn’t dwell on the strangeness of the room. Instead, muttering curses to whatever gods of modern architecture had decreed urinals passe, he stepped into a stall and did what he had come to do.

On the way to wash his hands, he saw something that stopped him. A woman was standing there, big as you please, using the sink. The man was indignant, wondering how this silly woman could have failed to realize she had wandered into the men’s room by mistake.

Which is when it hit him like bricks. One hand flew to his cheek, he said, “Oh my goodness!” and rushed out of the women’s restroom just as the astonished woman behind him remembered to laugh.

I offer this story – yes, it happened, and I’ve been extra careful about public restrooms ever since – as illustration of a peculiar human trait. Meaning, our ability to reshape glaring evidence to fit a predetermined conclusion.

That trait is on constant display these days, every time some politician, political aide, Senate colleague or professional pundit solemnly assures us that Trent Lott is no bigot. Let Sen. Bill Frist stand in for all of them. “He’s not a racist,” said Frist, speaking on CNN’s “Inside Politics” program. “I’ve known Trent well the last eight years. The spin to this and the interpretations to this, I think is abhorrent.”

A few things to remember about Trent Lott. He is recalled by members of his college fraternity as an ardent opponent of integration. He’s had a long affiliation with the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. He has expressed his closeness to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He opposed the 1982 extension of the Voting Rights Act. He cast the only vote against the nomination of the first black judge ever to sit on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. And of course, he has been in political hot water for better than a week now, after suggesting the nation would have been better off had it elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond to the presidency in 1948.

The evidence is all around us. Yet apologists for the Mississippi senator and presumptive majority leader continue to reshape it so that it fits what they believe. And you have to wonder if they’re trying to fool us or simply fooling themselves.

I am not here to tell you Trent Lott is a racist, because I don’t know. I am here to say that, given the preponderance of the evidence, the idea is hardly as unthinkable as some would have us believe.

If one weakness of the African-American community is that it sometimes seems to see racism everywhere, one weakness of the white community is that it sometimes can’t see racism even when it plants itself astride their path, pokes a finger into their chest and says, “Hi, I’m racism. Pleased to meet you.”

They duck, dodge, deny, strain credibility to its breaking point with rhetorical brinksmanship and fanciful rationalizations. Anything but follow the evidence to its logical conclusion.

Trent Lott is not a racist? Why not? Why is that so impossible to believe? With apologies to Marvin Gaye, it makes me want to holler sometimes. I mean, what do they think a racist looks like? Do they think it’s some 9-foot-tall guy with a hood on his head and horns poking out on either side?

No. A racist is a guy who waves at you in the morning, who goes to church on Sunday, who works hard at his job, who loves his dog, his kids and his home team. A racist is a guy who looks just like Trent Lott.