America is not a post racial society. It is not going to become one.
The racial conflict that has flared into open protest in Ferguson, MO certainly has many links to America's past. Racial friction has been an integral aspect of this society since the first Europeans set foot in North America and began to push the native inhabitants out of the way. When the US was established as an independent nation, it was established by the founding fathers as a nation run by white people in the interest of white people.
Exploiting the resources of a vast continent required large resources of human labor. The people who controlled those resources were willing to resort to all necessary means to obtain that labor. Massive numbers of people were brought from Africa in chains and held as slaves. A long series of immigrants came more or less voluntarily to provide cheap labor. Some of them from Europe were regarded as marginally white and given rights of citizenship. Others such as people from Asian countries and Mexico were not.
As people have migrated to different parts of the country and different racial/ethnic groups have found themselves inhabiting the same space, relations have seldom been smooth and peaceful. There were race riots in 19th C San Francisco between the Irish and Chinese. As southern blacks began to move north their were eruptions of violence in northern cities over integration of neighborhoods. The civil rights movement of the 1960s blew the lid off the Jim Crow south and then produced riots in cities in various parts of the country.
It became an article of liberal faith that the civil rights concessions that were grudgingly made would ultimately lead to an era of racial peace and brotherhood. That hasn't happened. Blacks and Latinos are still at a substantial economic disadvantage and there is functional segregation in housing and education.
Ferguson offers a textbook example of shifting racial demographics. Suburban developers have long specialized in the techniques of creating and maintaining racially segregated suburbs. Starting at the end of WW II there was a typical pattern of middle class whites abandoning the inner city for suburban developments. Minorities moved in to the housing that they vacated. Over the past 70 years this process has continued like a rock thrown into a pond. Ferguson was a first ring suburb of St. Louis. It was a predominantly white community for an extended period. However, in the past 20 years there has been a major demographic shift. In 1990 it was 75/25 white. In 2010 it had become 30/70 black. That is a major shift in a relative short period of time. Much of the conflict is arising from the fact that almost all of the political and economic power and control remains in white hands.
This is a pattern that is being repeated in many parts of the country. There are a growing number of cities in California that have become majority Latino with the power still almost totally controlled by whites. You only have to look at the demographic projections for the next 25-50 years to see that the US is clearly headed down the road to a day when whites will no longer be a majority in the nation. There are already four states in which they are not. Anybody who thinks that they are going to graciously and peacefully share power, need only look at Ferguson.
We are already seeing efforts to hold back the brown tide. There are schemes like voter ID laws and other means of making it more difficult to register and vote that are clear attempts to roll back the provisions of the civil rights act. The anti-immigration forces are regularly playing away on their racist dog whistles.
What is likely to intensify the effects of these demographic and political shifts is the economic reality that we live in a society that has been experiencing a progressive trend to greater and greater economic inequality over the past 40 years. Nothing is happening that is likely to change that trend. That is going to mean middle and working class people faced with a dwindling share of resources. The rich and powerful have always found racial and ethnic divisions to be the tool of choice to sow division among the masses and prevent them from uniting to bring about change. They will have a rich reservoir of conflict to help them protect the walls of the gated communities.