Metaphors are only helpful to a certain extent — at some point we need to anchor that back in reality. In this case, the building materials were the ridiculously misguided views on race that built the foundation of modern racism that the author describes.
When you have a culture that was created around ideas of racial superiority, as was this country, which viewed entire groups of people as being somewhat less than human based on skin tone and recent geographic origin, those cultural views are not going to fade away easily. They might change shape and tone, but the essence remains the same. Slavery became oppression became segregation became economic exclusion became the war on drugs became mass incarceration and fragmented communities. All while many of us have declared there is no problem, that racism doesn’t exist — or that it’s only a small band of rednecks and the 45th president that are the racist ones.
Culture is an invisible hand that silently directs more of our behaviors and social systems than we would often admit. While we have much to be proud of in American culture and values, those ignorant racist views that have existed since the early days of America are not part of that. Our racist history still courses through our veins like a poison in the bloodstream of our nation. Until we can accept the diagnosis, that we have ingested poison, we will continue to vomit violence and division.
