it still worries me that so many people feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to say such horrible stupid things out loud
Relatively raised levels of isolation and reliance on social media tends to cushion us against the degree of explicit racism in Britain, and there's a frustrating lack of easily available recent research on the subject of people self-regarding as such (lots showcasing the effects of racism in health, public services etc but not on social sentiment). But I can't imagine it's much better than
in 2014 when 30% odd of people described themselves as prejudiced.
Tbh I'd actually expect worse given the last few Brexit, "migrant crisis," "war on woke" and "blame the pandemic on the foreigners" years – plus people who
are explicitly prejudiced have, similarly to anti-racists, been increasingly corralled into communities which are self-reinforcing, so the number of genuinely extreme types, and those who think it's fine to say the quiet part out loud in public, will have also risen. Certainly the number of attacks on minorities has
skyrocketed.
(2017 itself was a considerable increase on 2014 (
pdf) when 42,930 race hate crimes were reported).
In a sense the caller is correct. Media doesn't really reflect the view of the general public in the round, as such, because for a large part of the public that barrier against overt racism isn't really there. The sensibilities of the media probably do address the majority view, but a much slimmer one that is assumed.