There is one crucial distinction, however. We can isolate ourselves in a ghetto, but we have to go into white America to achieve some of our dreams. For African-Americans, this country's history of slavery and Jim Crow laws has a distinct and very personal connection, a connection that for most white Americans just is not there. Perhaps that's why, when President Clinton issued an apology for slavery, Newsweek wondered if an apology was really necessary. Americans, meanwhile, wondered why the concept of an apology was even being questioned.
Most white people deny that they are racist.
When we talk to each other, we do not open up and say what is on our minds. As a result, notes Dalton in his book Racial Healing, most conversations about race end up being more carefully worded than instructive. Many suffer from race weariness as it is. They fear that the struggle is never-ending, and are of the view that nothing we have tried to date has worked. That people come in different colors is not a problem, nor are racial differences necessarily a bad thing.