[Professor S]

I think we need to be realistic and look at racism through the prism of history.

Is racism gone? Of course not, but it never will be. Ever. Our brains cannot process every individual we meet or face we see separately, and it must group individuals by categories to allow for cognitive thought. They are called "social schemas". That doesn't mean that we are all destined to be clansmen, it just means that we will always group people together who look or act similarly, and we will always prefer to be around people like ourselves. Just look around at a high school lunchroom if you don;t believe me.

The key is that we have come a long way as a world culture in rejecting malicious racism; the habit of lumping all of the worlds ills on one group or another. is it gone? No, but the fact that a black man is about to win the Presidency says a lot about how our group mind has changed.

I think America has changed enough that racism across the world has become the true issue. Anti-semitism is rampant throughout europe and the middle east, and entire ethnic groups have almost been wiped out in Africa and Eastern Europe in just the past decade or so. Several nations still allow slavery.

America is not the home of racism anymore, and quite honestly, it never was the sole source as you might have been made to believe.