At a time when a black man has been made a serious candidate for the Presidency, it should be recognized that we are generally past the racism of the segregation era. Sure, there are still a relatively few racist punks out there, as there always have been and always will be. Bigotry and prejudice will never go away entirely; it’s part of human nature. Anyone with a room temperature IQ should be able to understand that. The problem is that the institutionalized racism of the 50s and 60s has not gone away, it’s simply changed form. We are still judged, sometimes exclusively, by the color of our skin, and very rarely by the content of our character.

In just one example, many years ago, while I was still serving in the Air Force Reserve, I had to go to the mandatory Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) training. At one point the instructor had several randomly selected students stand up. There were a few who were white and a few who were black. (My unit, being located near Washington, DC was about 50-50 white to black). The instructor asked anyone who had ever been the victim of racial discrimination to step forward. When one of the whites stepped forward, he received a derisive “You!?” from a black woman in the audience who gave the impression that she thought the idea of a white person experiencing racial discrimination was absurd. The woman was not reprimanded, and was ignored by the instructor. Imagine if a white person had said that about a black claiming discrimination.

Nowadays there is a “Black Entertainment Television” network, a Black History Month, a Congressional Black Caucus, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a black "College Fund." There are black churches, black leaders, African-American Studies classes, and “Historically” black colleges. If you were to name a similar institution by substituting “white” for “black” you would be reviled as racist, and probably rightly so – imagine a “Congressional White Caucus.” Still, no one complains about any of these terms, and people (usually on the right) only complain about the existence of the groups when they say or do something that hurts race relations (which is frequently, in some cases.)

Conversely, it’s also easy to point out when blacks are discriminated against, particularly by the Left. The Left believes (with a fair amount of supporting evidence, mind) that blacks represent a monolithic voting bloc. The problem is that the Left believes that blacks should represent a monolithic voting bloc, so long as they continue to vote for the Left. Any time a black man expresses an opinion that is not in lock-step with the Leftist Tolerance and Diversity mantra, or worse, actually sides with the Republican Party, he is excoriated as a “sellout” or an “Uncle Tom.” The list is long and growing. Just look at Bill Cosby, Colin Powell (before he endorsed then-Senator Obama for the Presidency), Condoleezza Rice, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams, and Larry Elder, just to name a few.   On the Left, blacks are not allowed to have any views on race but those held by the Left – that racism is responsible for every black person’s problems, that affirmative action is absolutely necessary to regain equality, that the culture of welfare and single motherhood that permeates the black community is only bad when it can be attributed to racism but is good when it is considered “just a part of the culture,” that slavery reparations are a necessary goal, and that whites, particularly white conservatives are the enemy and wish to return to the time of slavery.

Furthering all that, we have the long string of “first black” this or “first Hispanic” that or “first woman” the other thing. Again, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that was important. The integration of society so that blacks and whites could be eligible for the same jobs and the same pay was crucial to equality and civil rights. Now that society is more or less fully integrated, the “first black” this or that has become cliché. We have our “first Black President” in office right now. It would be an interesting bit of research, though it will never be possible, to see how many people voted for Barack Obama solely for the color of his skin and ignoring the content of his character. His views on race had been reasonably well hidden during the campaign, but were flayed open for all to see when his friend, Professor Henry Louis Gates (who is black) got himself arrested after a confrontation with police. President Obama sided with Gates despite mounting evidence that Gates was in the wrong and completely at fault for what had happened. We are also about to have the “first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice” – Sonia Sotomayor – a little victory for the Left made possible by the verbal disembowelment of Miguel Estrada – who had been nominated to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, a stepping stone to the SCOTUS – early in the Bush administration. Her views on race have been proven not to go beyond the color of the litigants’ skin. Her speech to University of California – Berkeley students in 2001 made that clear when she declared that given equal wisdom a Latina woman should be a better jurist than a white man.   She displayed that bias legally, as well, when she ruled that the state should be allowed to throw out tests designed to measure the content of the character of firefighters because the color of the firefighters’ skin wasn’t quite right.

I fear that Dr. King’s dream of his children seeing the day when people are judged by their character and not their color is dead. What progress has been made in the legal equality of blacks and whites has been almost completely offset by the continuation of racism by the race-baiters on the Left. I would love to see a world where color, be it white, black, yellow, red, brown, or green with yellow stripes and pink and purple polka dots, doesn’t matter but quality of character is preeminent. But given the progress we’ve made in the last decade, I fear that is just a dream.