I appreciate your core message, although I am hardly part of your intended audience. You have done a fine job of highlighting the historical weight of systemic racism in a way open minded people can easily grasp. And you don’t grovel to right wing nuts the way Thomas Sowell and Armstrong Williams used to in their columns.

I have only a couple of points to quibble about. The first is I find it a false equivalent you set up between the KKK and the Panthers. I do understand you are talking primarily to white people who may well see the two as different sides of the same racist coin. But the truth is the Panthers never went about lynching anybody.

Second, your agreement with the “we don’t do feelings” mantra regarding the making of policy is specious at best. Somebody’s feelings are always taken into consideration when policy is being made — just not poor people’s. Policy is largely made according to how those with money and power “feel” about a given issue. It is much more accurate to say “we do our own interests” than to say “we don’t do feelings.”

Finally, your observation that most conservative white people don’t know any black people. Don’t act as if that is merely incidental. It is intentional. They don’t know any black people because they don’t want to. It is inconvenient to the stereotypes they’ve grown comfortable with to actually put faces on our social problems.