From “US: The Resurrection of American Terror” by Rev. Kenneth W. Wheeler
America is still racially divided. We are not a United States of America but a segregated America. In many ways, we still live separate from one another and that separateness allows us to remain imprisoned by our fears and prejudices, which mean that we still do not know each other. Unless we are willing to change the segregated pattern of our living in America we will continue to remain strangers to one another.
In addition to fomenting racially charged violence and segregation, the real sin of Jim Crow in the South was that the institutionalized racial unfriendliness and racial alienation it imposed still undergirds our present culture. To a large degree, this dynamic characterizes the state of race in our national life. We may be polite when we are in each other’s presence but we are not at a point where we are vulnerable with each other, transparent with each other, and truly human with each other. To those white people who believe they couldn’t possibly be racist because they have Black friends, I would say that’s not enough. Having one or two Black friends will never give you the kind of cultural understanding of the racial challenges that Black people face each and every day of their lives. The truth is this: You benefit from your white skin. Every day you are given the benefit of the doubt because of your white skin. If you doubt this reality, ask any young Black male what it’s like to enter a department store. Ask any person of color how many times they have been pulled over by the police. Ask any Black person what it feels like to be the only Black person in the room.