White males in particular complain of reverse discrimination for choice assignments or for promotions to editorial positions. The perceptions on both sides constitute what is by now a drearily familiar story in American life. Whites and blacks live in different conceptual universes on questions of race. Whites see a vastly expanded field of opportunities that blacks have failed fully to use to their advantage. Most whites do not think of themselves as racists and they suspect blacks of indulging in blanket charges of racism as an excuse for inequalities in performance of which they are embarrassed.
Blacks see whites as engaged in a massive self- deception as to the persistence of racial prejudice.
Behind a facade of equal opportunity they perceive a persisting structure of discrimination-one all the more insidious because it does not announce itself for what it is. The result of all this is that we cannot speak to one another except to exchange resentments. People of good will on both sides retreat into bewildered or resigned silence, leaving the field to demagogues and grievance-mongers. This is in many ways a season of hope for America. On many issues, the worst of our ideological differences may be behind us.