In a racially divided society, majority rule may be perceived as majority tyranny. I believe that Darwin has given that question a generic answer. On second thought, the question may be diagnosed as a symptom of the need to affirm a measure of common value in the modern milieu of alienation and reification. Identity politics has arrived. Today, the problem of cultural ethos or ethnicity has become the major site of racial conflict.
Some people become problems by the simple fact of their existence.
The President's Initiative on Race is to be welcomed in calling attention to the real problem. The Commission's banal if not inadequate findings, however, seem to demonstrate that it may be a strategy of containment rather than critique. Structural inequality and institutional discrimination, the substantive issues raised in the sixties, have not been fully addressed. Even mainstream media call it therapy. The common life or national identity rises from the rubble of differences vanquished, ostracized, and erased.