Joathan Chait, NY Magazine

Fifty years after the March on Washington, no major faction in American life disagrees with Martin Luther King Jr. or the evil of state-sponsored racial apartheid. The terms of the racial debate have shifted massively in liberals’ favor. The conservative stance on racial questions in 2013 is vastly more benign that it was in 1963. It is not, however, completely benign.

There are many studies quantifying the fact that Americans still judge other people in part by the color of their skin. Conscious racial discrimination may be legally prohibited, and informal expressions of racism essentially banned from polite society, but unconscious racial stereotypes live on. A pile of studies and experiments show that black job applicants receive lower consideration than equally qualified white ones. This remains one of those findings that conservative discourse continues not to acknowledge.

It is also true, and not unrelated to the above, that conservative politics still leans heavily on the stoking of white racial paranoia. Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Fox News, and many others routinely prey upon wild, baseless white fears that President Obama is engaged in reparations, that black goons are intimidating Republicans at the polls, that Obama is ushering in an era in which black kids beat up white ones. This is not a handful of incidents. McKay Coppins documented the imaginary race war that conservative media have peddled to their audience.

The policy grounds occupied by white racial conservatives today may be overwhelmingly less brutal than those it occupied a generation ago. But conservatives and libertarians didn’t merely “miss” the logic of the civil-rights movement, the way you might miss the housing bubble. They got it wrong for reasons that continue to be blindingly obvious today.

playa2 wrote:I just want any of you to give feed back on why blacks were left out of our AMERICAN HISTORY ! Did we do something wrong , Can any of you in this thread EXPLAIN ?

the answer in painfully obvious. Fear, hate and greed.

Fear that the blacks would rise up and seek revenge/justice.

Hate of Black folk which I never understood since we didn't ask to be brought over here and didn't ask to be enslaved

Greed...many of those in power with family fortunes were originally built on the backs of slaves. Even aft slavery, this country was built on the backs of Blacks and Asians who, mostly had no say in the matter. This country would never have been properly settled by Europeans without the building of the Railroads and most of the laborers were Black and Asian.

Nalod wrote:Soviet Russia was build on the backs of enslaved workers to build its infrastructure.

Colonialism of imperial Europe to all reaches of the globe built fortunes thru "Trade"........

Greed drives conquests over history. Romans, Egyptians, the Ottoman Empire, the cursades, In teh east you had "dynasties". Japan has often felt "entitled" to enslave what is Korea, Tawain, and China. Russians conquest into the east encompass many native populations. They did not choose to be ruled either.

Tribes in Africa enslaved other tribes and sold them. Still happens today!!!

It don't make it right by any Stretch, but it points to the cruel nature humans can have toward one another.

the difference between the tribes in Africa and the rest of the world is that those taken as slaves in tribal raids, weren't kept as slaves for their entire lives. They would serve a specific amount of years before being allowed to return to their tribes. Europeans took it to the extreme and tried to make it last for as many generations as they possibly could. So when Whites say, the Africans took slaves too, it was not the same concept of slavery as the Europeans enjoyed.

the more sophisticated Europeans used the trade to weaken the tribes to the point where they could come in and take complete control of the country, raping it of its natural resources. Then racists have the nerve to say Blacks should go back.......to what. What have you left there....an unstable region whose people suffer to this day. Who are the guerrilla's getting their guns from.....not many machine smith shops in Africa.

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South's economy. By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War (1861-65). Though the Union victory freed the nation's 4 million slaves, the legacy of slavery continued to influence American history, from the tumultuous years of Reconstruction (1865-77) to the civil rights movement that emerged in the 1960s, a century after emancipation.

Do you realize how hard it is to overcome hundreds of years of slavery and oppression? The damage done to self worth, family structures and the Black male during this countries history is incalculable. My dad was jaded by the racist times he lived in. Both my grandmothers are still alive in their 80's. Just lost my wife's grandmother this year she was 96. They've seen a lot but too many things remain the same from their youth til now. The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, abject poverty, last hired and 1st fired, poor education, predatory business practices like the sub prime lending scandal and the great recession which left Blacks with less than half their wealth and twice the jobless rate of whites, voter suppression and gerrymandering is all one long continuation of roadblocks to Blacks in this country being able to progress.

There is no magic bullet to fix the inequality of this country or the world. The rich will always suppress the poor and the darker skinned peoples will be even lower on the totem pole as things have been for some time throughout the world. It's the easiest way to discriminate tho not the only way. Religion or ethnicity are used to discriminate as well but it's real easy to look at the darker person who stands out and can't blend in. This is why LAWS are the only way to make a change. Every change for making this country more equal came with the force of the federal government. Nothing has changed in that regard.