It is also behavior which is becoming increasingly unacceptable, as a general matter, in American society. Yet there is another, more insidious face of racism, one that is not so easy to dismiss. It is the face of corporate or collective racism, of the racism that remains permeating our society and its institutions, a racism which benefits whites at the same time as it oppresses blacks. We see it when an unarmed, law-abiding man from West Africa is shot 41 times by New York City police. It rears its head in statistics that document that poverty is a race issue, that the income and wealth gap in America remains a racial one well over thirty years after Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty.
Justice always requires help.
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.