The main problem with race relations in this country is that we have built a whole culture around denial and falsehood. We can’t afford this anymore. It’s really time to be honest about it.

As Andrew Young said, you really can’t grow up in this country without being racist to some extent. By that definition, I am prejudiced about race, I am a racist.

Prejudice toward, and fear of, “the other” is an evolutionary hold-over from prehistoric times, when “the other” usually was dangerous or at least a competitor. As with so much of our heritage, it has been made obsolete by the progress of civilization, but our inner selves haven’t caught up.

The important thing is what we do about it, how well we recognize and deal with our own prejudices. Prejudice is an emotion. Do we indulge that emotion and perpetrate injustice, or do we use the faculty of reason to overcome it?

For example, this poll makes it clear that the racism denialists regard affirmative action and similar programs as unjust on their face. Really? REALLY? Setting aside how these programs are administered, what kind of fool cannot look around and see that the deck is stacked against black Americans?

It is similarly stacked against poor whites, as I know from personal experience. It is not just the lack of resources that blights opportunity in that class, it is growing up in a social environment that is fundamentally hostile to intellect and learning. (Looking like a “messican” didn’t help either but that is another story.)
This anti-intellectual atmosphere exists for poor people of all races in one way or another. Is it an injustice that I was eligible for the GI Bill and certain scholarships that were not available to my more fortunately born contemporaries? It really isn’t and, indeed, not many people think that it is.
Why, then, do they regard other efforts to level the playing field as favoritism and injustice?