You would think that with the election of a the first African-American President that this country had achieved some sort of milestone, that if we hadn't exactly become a post-racial society, at least we were making progress. But is it one step forward, two steps back? There are reasons for thinking so.
Recently (in Paris, Texas, of all places) there was a confrontation between the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panthers. Talk about a time warp. I thought we had seen the last of these organizations in the seventies. The proximate cause the competing demonstrations in this small town was classic: white man is acquitted of killing black man. But in this instance, the facts of the case DO seem fuzzy, and the acquittal was probably justified. But old habits die hard, and reflex actions by a radical black group led to a countering action by a white supremacist group. The Sixties need to be replayed all over again.
But that's hardly the only echo of racism to occur recently.
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