Cimorene

King was right, and it still works like that. I'm discovering, through some university-related research, that a lot of the exact same things people are talking about in this discussion were being said in the 18th century. It could be depressing, but it isn't. Because you can see that these ideas a) won't die, even when subsequent centuries tried really hard to quash these concepts and b) are, overall, winning, and always will be so long as people keep fighting for them.

The racism of today is nothing like the racism of fifty years ago. It's still ugly, bad, wrong, and all of that, but poor representation in fiction is a hell of a long way from lynchings and Jim Crow. Endlessly fighting these battles of words is exhausting, but it's progress from the physical violence of the 60s-era wars.

It's not fair, and it's important that white people who've made it past the first hump of the learning curve on this do their part to help drag their compatriots with them, but it's another stage in the battle for this progress, and it's a war that eventually, the Good People will win.