There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America.
The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person.
Our goal is to have a country that's not divided by race.
Our goal is to have a country that's not divided by race. And my impression, as I travel around the country, is that that's the kind of country that most people want, as well, and that we all have prejudice, we all have certain suspicions or stereotypes about people who are different from us, whether it's religious or racial or ethnic, but what I think I found in the American people, I think there's a core decency there, where if they take the time, if they get the time to know individuals, then they want to judge those individuals by their character.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.
That's just how white folks will do you. It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserved of their scorn.
The way we have to measure progress is not, "Is there ever going to be an incident of racism in the country?" It's, "How does the majority of our country respond?"
I warn young people that I interact with about this - you get into unrealistic expectations where you think that, "Oh, we're gonna eliminate racism like that. After Obama's elected how could there be any racism?".
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