I was a little young to appreciate the significance of the Court ruling against school segregation (I was 5), but by the time of the Civil Rights Act I understood: Racism is fucking evil, a stain on the soul of humanity. By the time I was in college a few years later I was naive enough to believe that it would be our generation, young whites and blacks standing together, that would virtually eradicate at least conscious racism in America within my lifetime, or at the very least do so outside of the South, much like Smallpox was eradicated, and Polio virtually so.
I have never been so wrong about anything remotely as important. It is an utter moral travesty, a full 64 years after Brown vs the Board of Education, that racism continues to spring up like noxious weeds everywhere in this country, and that it is knowingly embraced at the highest level of our government.
Silently taking a knee, over that, radical? Disrespectful ??!?? How many fucking centuries can a people be expected to put up with an unfulfilled promise of justice and equality? And when they do symbolically AND respectfully protest, showing reverence for the promise America made, they get disparaged? THEY are our true patriots.
Those of us who are white need to up our game in the fight against racism. We all know some racists personally: they are family, they are neighbors, they are coworkers and sometimes friends. Sure it can be awkward at best to confront racism in those we know. Yes it may also fracture relationships beyond repair. But silence is not an option. Voting for progressives is not enough. Racism will not just wither away as Marx once claimed the State would, but didn't, under communism.
I apologize to those of generations younger than my own that we could not get this done. We did not do enough. Bless all those still out there trying.