PatienceAndHumility:
But regarding “big R” institutional Racism, an enduring residual prejudice will always exist in society between people who are different. Fundamentally however, the issue of institutional racism doesn’t exist in a material way in the West in these modern days- Barack Obama as president showed this. General equality of opportunity also points to this. The meshing of cultures through globalization, will by its very nature take time- there will always remain people who will use race as a dividing issue. But we in the west are very much far ahead of many societies on “diversity”, and this is taken for granted- look at the far East, middle East, Africa in this same regard for example.
One in eight Americans is African-American, more than this are Hispanic-American. Yet in your whole history only one person of colour and no Hispanic-American that I am aware of has even been nominated by a major party either as President or VP.
That you have had a black President is certainly a great start, but nowhere near enough that you are entitled to rest on it as if it were a laurel of some sort. Nor is it any sort of evidence that institutional racism is dead. Starting to die, please God, but not dead.
