If you accept the current paradigm, that all people are more or less the same, regardless of race or creed, you still have to explain why some communities tend to have much higher shares of violence, crime, family breakdown, poverty, etc. You will eventually realize that these dysfunctional communities are indeed damaged, they are breeding places for misery, and the people that come from there are much more likely to be anti-social and delinquent. To claim otherwise is just plain wrong.

But if you've actually traveled a bit, and taken the trouble to inform yourself, you soon see race has nothing to do with it. In Northern Ireland the Catholics were described and treated in much the same way by the Protestant majority, even though they are all the same race. In our own country, every immigrant group has gone through a period where it has been pointed out as sub-human by the immigrants that arrived just a few years before them. And it's not just dark skinned peoples either, think of the Irish and Italian and Jewish experience in America. And of course, Europe has their Turkish and Arab immigrants, other countries have religious and ethnic and tribal prejudices. The beat goes on.

Well meaning people realize this and try to distance themselves from the prejudice, but in the process they sometimes go too far, and pretend that the barbarities of these minority communities are not appalling and criminal and disgusting. They make excuses.

Racists, on the other hand, gleefully pounce on these social ills and exaggerate them and use it to justify their hatred and prejudice. And of course, they love to point out the inconsistencies and contradictions of the "well-meaning" folk I spoke of earlier to further justify their hatred of the minority, as well as their envy of the enlightened majority, who they curiously blame for oppressing them. Sound familiar?

I was born in 1947 in the deep South, and I am a member of a minority myself (although I can pass for white by my appearance, name, speech, and manner) and I know precisely how this mechanism operates; let's just say I am uniquely qualified. I also know that even if crime and social degeneracy are correlated with race, I also know it to be highly correlated with ignorance and poverty and economic disadvantage. And so is racism. The worst racists are the poor and ignorant, regardless of their skin color (yes, not all racists are WASP). Everyone wants someone to look down on, especially if they can somehow twist it into their own agenda, and there will always be toxic personalities who endlessly seek out reasons to validate their malignant beliefs and to taunt and humiliate those who do not share them.

Lest I come across as too pessimistic, let me also add that in my own lifetime I have seen enormous progress in this area, and things are getting better every day. The problem will not go away overnight, but it is going away, slowly but surely. I think this is something our country can take great pride in, and I think that no matter how history treats us, America will be remembered for this. It is something I am very proud of, not personally, but for my country.