There has been a good deal of discussin of racism on dKos recently. I thught that I would add my experiences and analysis. I'm a white guy in his 60s who has campaigned for a few black candidates. You learn things that way.
One experience which has nothing to do with campaigns: My wife was robbed by some kids some years ago. She described them to the cop. "Young teen and a preteen, both white."
"White?" Said the cop. "That's no description." Well, in the neighborhood where the robbery took place, 'white teen' was a quite distinctive description. It was a mixed community with plenty of white adults, but almost no white teens. I'm sure that he would have taken "Latino teens" as a description, but it would cover gobs of kids around there.
More after the jump.
For the first century after the Civil War, Blacks experienced walls. Nowadays, they are more likely to experience hurdles. They can get there, but it's harder. Soon after racial discrimination became illegal, and well before it disappeared, we began to be very sensitive about "reverse discrimination."
Historically-Black colleges went to great efforts to recruit whites, using incentives which would rouse screams if they were used by white schools to recruit Blacks.
Early on, there was a long court case in Chicago about the police department's bias in hiring. The Black plaintiffs finally were hired and compensated with the differnce between the pay that they got on their old jobs and the pay that they would have received as patrolmen. There was no compensation for any possibility of promotion.
Later, there was a Black mayor. He transferred the cops out of "internal investigations," the cops who investigated other cops. This had been a cesspool of cover-up. The transferred officers sued. They were awarded large compensation for the lost chances of promotion; apparently, internal affairs has faster promotions than other divisions. Among others collecting the compensation was the widow of an officer who had died in the mean time; just how he could have received promotion wasn't clear.
Institutions and attitudes interact complexly. The country is full of immigrant groups who look out for the relatin of the US to "the old country." The interst of Polish-Americans in Polish affairs and Italian-Americans in the relation of the US to Poland is long-standing and accepted. Blacks expressing a similar interest in Africa seldom receive the same acceptance.