I think we clearly have the same end-goal (i.e., racial integration and equality and getting beyond the polarizing racial paradigm) but differ in how to get there. My view, in a word, is that by doing what we’re currently doing, we’re not merely re-balancing the scales, but rather, fueling both black rage and white rage and reifying both black identity and white identity, which results in making our racial issues worse rather than better. Anyone who’s lived through the past few years of constant talk about race and racism and race-consciousness would recognize that the level of racial tension and acrimony in these few years is something not seen in many decades.

I don’t agree with many of the points in this article that came out yesterday, and I certainly don’t agree with the way it tries to blame Obama for everything, but I think it does give you an overall flavor of why whites are feeling so angry in our society at this point. You can’t keep attacking these people and expect them to take it lying down. It’s not realistic to expect them to say, “Well, our ancestors oppressed blacks, so we deserve to be demonized for it now and to have our nation bend over backwards to even the odds.” Very few people are capable of that level of self-criticism, especially when the criticism is not even based on their actions, but rather, those of their ancestors, so that there’s an issue of taking the sins of the father out on the son (and on many whose mothers and fathers weren’t even in this country yet at the relevant time).

As I’ve described here, it’s a mistake to base present policy on what happened in the past. We need to teach and remember history in order to avoid repeating its mistakes, but we can’t live in thrall to our history. We have to take the problems of the present as we find them and address what’s going on now, not what happened 200 years ago or even 50 years ago. This means recognizing race to be an outmoded, regressive manner of categorizing people and doing our best to move beyond it, even while we do our best to aid poor people of all races in making their way out of the cycle of poverty and into the middle class and beyond.