rongs of the country's racist past, is currently being assaulted by the powers of white racist America as "unfair" to whites! It is certainly not a hopeful picture which Hacker paints. He pleas for a change on the part of whites who are racists and those who go along with racism passively through failure to act, but there is little evidence in the book that hope for or expectation of such a change is an any way realistic.
Even more discouraging is Hacker's compelling argument that this racism is not simply a matter of individual white Americans waking up every day and consciously deciding to enact their racism. To the contrary, the racism of this country is deeply embedded in the national unconscious and in its institutions and white leaders and citizens.
"Dividing people into races started as convenient categories" (ix), writes Hacker. Such division is required of the slaveholding culture which serves as the foundation of racial relations and attitudes in this society. It is not only "convenient," it is a psychological and moral requirement of those who participate in slavery, or tacitly approve of slavery with their silence, that they see the slaves as creatures who are not fully human, who are inferior in many ways, who are not deserving of the same fair and respectful treatment afforded to whites.
This individual, social and institutional degradation of black slaves is at root of the racism which exists in this society in the late twentieth century and which has embedded itself deeply in the national consciousness as well as unconsciousness.
As we read, "Dividing people into races started as convenient categories. However, those divisions have taken on lives of their own, dominating our culture and consciousness, coloring passions and opinions, contorting facts and fantasies" (ix).
In other words, even the fantasies---the stuff of the unconscious---are stained with racist attitudes, and racist attitudes inevit...