It's only in the post-Communist era that Russian society has begun to talk, fitfully, about the disease of ethnic bigotry. True, blacks were hardly the primary targets of hatred in the ex-Soviet Union. But it seems likely that prejudice transfers easily from one group to another. The leap from hating dark-skinned ethnics such as the Azerbaijanis or the Chechens to hating blacks may be particularly easy. It would be unfair to single out immigrants from the former Soviet Union as racists.
Race is a uniquely painful dilemma in America.
But this country has also done more than any other to confront and combat prejudice. When a guest on a CNN talk show disputed Mrs. Cosby's claim of omnipresent racism, Dr. Poussaint cited polls in which most whites agree that racism still exists. We need to continue repairing the racial rifts. But the kind of rhetoric used by Mrs. Cosby can only have the opposite effect.