America is still a deeply racist country?

Arnade

Chris Arnade, writing in the Guardian, claims that, in spite of the fact we have finally elected a president of color, we are still a nation that is "deeply racist".  His evidence for this is overhearing some white guy use the N-word in reference to our newly elected President among other things, such as the persistent poverty of African-Americans.  A bar is a perfect place to get a relatively unguarded opinion about many things, and what better place than a bar to go after a funeral for a loved one. 

His father was a civil rights activist during the 1950s, a time when to do so was to put one's self in physical danger.  It was decidedly an unpleasant time and, yes, there were lots of pointy-headed white morons running around the south taking pot shots at those with the temerity to alter the established legal and electoral landscape that had been in force down there since the end of Reconstruction.  Yes, institutional racism was rampant in this country.  Even in the North there were businesses at which black Americans were not welcome. 

In my native Missouri, I remember a restaurant in Wentzville which was called "The Southern Air" and a truck stop on the long haul from St. Louis to Chicago called "The Dixie Truck Stop", both of which I suspect were veiled attempts by these businesses to keep blacks away.  (Interestingly the black rock and roller Chuck Berry bought the The Southern Air in 1980, then got into legal trouble as owner because of things that had nothing to do with race and more to do with video cameras in bathrooms). 

In any case, in former years, lots of white people did not want to sleep in hotels where black people slept, and did not want to eat in restaurants where black people might also dine, or (god forbid) have their little children go to schools where black children were also present. 

Georgia, 1950s

They did not want to sit on toilet seats previously sat on by blacks, and they did not want to drink from water fountains where a black person might have placed his lips.   Clearly such squeamishness was widespread in the old South and it richly deserved to be swept away.  

Even now there are lots of public restrooms where you are provided with paper seat covers so that in using such necessary devices you might be spared the ordeal of putting your naked white behind on a

seat that had previously been used by God knows whom?  A person of color?  A serial killer?  A child molester?  You never know what unsanitary and morally questionable human being might have used the public facilities.  Indeed some people are reluctant to touch the flush handles and so leave their waste for other people to discover.  (I hope you are not eating while reading this.)

Arnade's article concludes that racism is still omnipresent in America because of (1) the existence of poverty and the fact that unpleasant things still happen to people of color in this country, (2)  there is still a physical separation between white and black people in small towns, where the blacks still live on one side of the tracks and the whites live on the other, and (3)  there are still lots of white folks who will use the N-word in nasty little dive bars.  

Well boo hoo.  There are lots of places in this country where if you are the wrong color, it gets you stared at  as though you were a beast with three horns and five eyes.  America is color-coded still.  Blacks often form a large proportion of the very poorest of Americans.  However among both blacks and non-blacks poverty tends to be a great predictor of future poverty, and racism and ignorance are without question equal opportunity employers.  

 I worked as a math teacher at an all black school for a year on the South Side of Chicago, and while I was not treated badly by everyone, there were enough blatant racism down there to give me a chill. The school was a dumping ground for students other schools did not want.  They needed a body in a classroom to preserve the semblance of the idea that education was going on.  They hired me because there just aren't that many certified math teachers willing to attempt teaching kids in the ghetto.   At the end of year ALL the math teachers were fired, as if the zoo-like non-learning atmosphere there was completely our fault. 

But what was the cause and what was the effect?  In classical liberal fashion, these white northeasterners confuse cause and effect.  Is poverty and crime the result of racism or the cause of racism?  Racism is neither unique to white people nor unique to America, and guilt-mongering by very privileged white people in New York and Boston is not going to change that.

Racism is a many-splendored thing.   It blossoms in the ghetto as well as in white country clubs.  America may be a deeply racist country, but so is every other country in the world. There is nothing special or exceptional about America's version of it.   Get over it.  What I would like to ask one of these liberals holed up in their intellectual and moneyed enclaves in Northeast America is:  At what point would you expect racism to disappear from this country?   Is it the point at which people's differences disappear into unrecognizeable homogeneity and everyone is a medium brown color?  

I expect you would have a very, very long wait.