quote:

There will always be racism but mostly from the fringes. From angry, strange hateful people with no credibility to whom no one pays any attention or gives any respect. It's always been here and always will be. But in the broader, mainstream sense, have we now put race behind us? Have we finally overcome?

I, too, want to believe, but the strange , angry, hateful people you list above make up a huge part of the American Heartland, and SArah the moose hunter turns them on.

Read Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus. And evening's read. He is speaking out of Winchester, Virginia, his hometown. See if he has tagged the folks roundabout pretty accurately. He does not call them hateful, just sort of locked into their belief system.

He fails in not giving enough weight to education as central to solving the problem, although in calling them "dumb as a bag of hair", he certainly sees its importance in making those folk what they are. Along with a depressed and depressing state of being.

I'd personally give his take on things huge weight in trying to decide your question. And it's not to be read to inspire hope, necessarily.