Dear KU COMS grad students,

Your letter is a masterful analysis of covert racism, its multiple layers of denial, and the political and institutional infrastructure that makes it possible. It is yet another strong indication that American society is turning a corner in understanding racism and, most importantly, in demonstrating the will of people of all backgrounds and communities to confront and halt it. Not to trivialize racism, but I find the analogy with smoking useful. Americans never believed public smoking could be banned; they always pointed to the failure of Prohibition as proof that “you can’t legislate morality.” But today smoking is banned, and that is proof that morality and behavior can indeed be guided in different directions, even against the opposition of deeply rooted, old-school, good-old-boy corporations and institutional powers. Racism is the mental and spiritual pollution of our public space, and you are helping to achieve what the civil rights movement, however great its accomplishments, could not: a new, higher standard of human health and equality. Simply put, we need public space to be universally racism-free as it is smoke-free. More power to you.

maglev