Yes, Racism Is Waning

Daily News contributor John McWhorter defends his view, against critics both black and white alike, that things are getting better.

Does racism exist? Definitely. However, I am more interested in how much it matters.

Here's what part of the mail I got that was not interesting: those infuriated by the mere suggestion that racism might be less prevalent than it used to be. There persists a heated core of people who seem to think the sentence "Racism is declining" has some kind of fetishistic power.

They seem to worry that it will cause a backlash or reversal. They worry that white people might misinterpret the sentence and — well, I'm not sure just what they think is actually going to happen next.

All I know is I've been told for a good decade now that it's dangerous to say "racism is declining" — and the last time I checked, during that time, America elected a black President. If that's a backlash, let's have more of it.

Read John McWhorter's entire piece at the Daily News.

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John McWhorter is a contributing editor at The Root. He is an associate professor at Columbia University and the author of several books, including Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English.