Is Your Silence Deliberate?

After awhile, one must wonder, exactly WHY people are silent about moral issues. They often claim ignorance upon confrontation with reality, but after observing so many of them protesting political matters about which they really ARE ignorant, ignorance hardly appears an excuse for failing to speak up when entire populations look the other way when morals get trodden under the collective feet of one's community. Are people ashamed to admit that they are racist, or that their own communities engage in crime? Is keeping things the way "they've always been" a valid reason to reject morality? Or are the people who do this more interested in covering their own unlawful behaviors?