Because so many causes can incite racist attitudes, as a nation we have to make a concerted effort to face the issue of inequality. Forty-six percent of the white people surveyed recently by the Times favored programs to help blacks. Despite all the backlash, politicians must protect efforts to level the playing field. Racism will decline even further when white people are in contact with more other people who have had adequate opportunities to flourish individually and to sustain families and communities that defy racist stereotypes. Racism and inequality are connected to each other in a circular way.
White people have to challenge racism among themselves.
All of us have to fight for the opportunities that protect people from the effects of racism and self-destructive adaptations to poverty and hopelessness. Our energy and resolve to work for change depend in part on recognizing where progress has been made, on honoring anti-racism and multicultural work, and on admitting that we still have a lot of work to do as a nation to reverse the effects of discrimination. Nevertheless, I'm not nearly as pessimistic as you are. I'm 68 years old and I can tell you that however bad you think this country is, it is a far, far better country than the one that I was born into. The series you read in the Times and the show you watched on the NewsHour would have been impossible even to conceive when I was a kid.