Those who say that racism is no longer a problem in this country are simply burying their head in the sand. They choose to ignore the evidence that racism in America is as virulent as ever.
For example, Drudge recently linked to a gut-wrenching story of a group of about fifty white kids attacking and beating a black man and his wife and two children, along with a couple of their friends, at a Fourth of July fireworks celebration in Akron, Ohio.
The police are investigating but have so far declined to call this a hate crime even though the young thugs were yelling "this is a white world" and "this is our world" as they beat their victims with kicks and punches.
Surely there's something rotten in a society that turns out young men so prone to hatred and violence. What are these kids' parents teaching them, or as is probably the case, did they actually learn their hatred and racism from their parents?
What more reason the police need to make this a hate crime is hard to say, and, in fact, the reluctance of the police to file that charge strongly suggests that there may be some bigotry among the Akron authorities as well. It seems that some races are more protected than others in this country.
All of that is quite true and it tells us something ugly about our culture. The only thing in the preceding that's not true is the racial identities of the perpetrators and victims in this report, which were reversed, but you probably suspected that.
RLC