...

So I don't know about you, but growing up in a middle-class white liberal family, I had this very, very clear idea that in the past there was racism, and maybe there was still a little of it about, but basically, Martin Luther King, jr. and company fixed the problem, and now everything's great.  You get a little older, a little more cynical, a lot older, a lot more cynical, but still, regardless of how wildly irrational it seems, on a deep level, this uplifting narrative remained embedded.

But boy...you see the entire right hysterically cheering the fact that it has apparently now been officially established that a cop can just murder a black kid with impunity--and not even just a cop, a wild-eyed vigilante like zimmerman is just as good--that these same kids are all dangerous thugs, animals, &c, you know the score--and not just random bottom-feeders, but prominent pundits and politicians--and it comes to you, with a sinking feeling, that, in fact, America is a viciously racist country, and you start thinking awful, dispiriting thoughts like fuck, man--maybe we shouldn't've elected Obama; we had this idea that he could symbolize racial harmony, but obviously we were wrong--sure, we knew that the wingers were intransigent, but we perhaps did not wholly anticipate the extent to which they would all immediately, without a moment of hesitation, turn the racial vitriol up to eleven (or maybe that's just me from my clueless position of white privilege, but I cannot help my shock), and fuck, man--they won.  This horrific racial hatred has been re-normalized to a degree I would not have imagined possible.  Love lost, and reflexive, unreasoning hatred won.  Congratulations, you monsters.