In the early 1960s the civil rights movement started the change. I actually believed racism in America was finally on the run. When I went in the Navy I could see for myself the Armed forces made a conscious, and successful, effort to desegregate. When I got to college the student movement and the counter-culture had racism on the run. I too, believed we had finally turned the corner. Blacks were making advances in the professions, media, the arts, and in politics.

Then, in the Reagan administration, we started to slide back again. No, I am NOT saying Ronald Reagan deliberately promoted racist policies, he did not, but somehow, some way, it seemed to give encouragement to the bubbling pool of racist magma that simmered beneath the thin crust of American society. All during the Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations it was teetering on a knife edge. But as soon as Trump came along the flood gates burst open again.

I've lived a long time, and I've had a clear advantage of seeing it from a Jim Crow close-up as a Southerner, but with the cultural perspective of an outsider, a Cuban immigrant with a home culture I could compare and contrast what I experienced to.

Racism runs deep in American culture. And Americans, even the most well-meaning and decent ones, can't see it. Fish are not really aware of the existence of water, they swim in it, they breath it, but they cannot see or feel it.

Its not likely to get any better in your lifetime, I used to think when the old generation died off it would go away, but racism is arising once again in people much younger than myself. And now, when it is being deliberately and systematically exploited and manipulated for political purposes, things will only get worse. And its not just black vs white, any more. Its now anti Jew, anti Arab, anti Latin, anti Asian, anti woman, anti gay, anti trans, anti anybody who isn't "American" enough to satisfy whatever the current definition is. And by the way, they're all pedophiles anyway, right? It seems like that's the only minority everybody still agrees to hate, isn't it?

For years we feared the Communists. Now there are no Communists, so we're busy building new scapegoats: urban people, coastal people, the homeless, the poor, the educated, , the intellectuals, the "elites" (except for the business elites, they are all blameless!). What do you think all those zombie movies are really all about? No, I'm NOT saying they're making zombie movies so we'll hate minorities, its just that the fear of minorities has suddenly made zombie movies very popular. See how it works? Its not an engineered conspiracy, its a form of Darwinian natural selection.

Except that white, Northern European majority is rapidly becoming a minority. And they know it. And they're scared. Those faceless hordes are running wild in the streets, taking all the jobs, (certainly all the good ones, have you noticed all the doctors and lawyers are foreigners or Jews--because they're all math nerds). And taking all the white girls, too. They're afraid all those little brown people out there are just dying to get even. They're afraid we're going to get treated by them the same way we treated them.