When President Obama was elected in 2008, thousands of racists came back out from under their rocks and exposed themselves. This should not have surprised anyone, since we knew these sick people still existed.
But in the last couple of years, a more pernicious and pervasive form of racism has been exposed in this country -- institutional racism. This type of racism, while even worse than that of the blowhard individuals, has been easier for Whites to ignore -- because it is built into our social systems (justice system, schools, etc.), and doesn't require a public racist to continue it. It just continues because good people do nothing to change it.
Maybe that is starting to change. As the top chart shows, about half of our population now believes that race relations are deteriorating -- and hopefully, they understand that this is caused, not by racist individuals, but by our racist institutions that daily deny equal justice and opportunity to our minority citizens.
It's time to change this. It won't be easy, and it will require the participation of all decent citizens -- but it must be changed.
The chart was made from a recent Rasmussen Poll -- done between January 14th and 17th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.
