Racism

I wasn't going to mention today's WaPo poll on racism in America -- apparently a third of Americans admit to having feeling of racial prejudice -- except that I think Kathryn Jean Lopez stretched a little too far in finding the bright side:

And while three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice,” seven in 10 did not. In other words, the overwhelming majority.

Well, sure, it's not like the unreasoning prejudices of one-third of all Americans could sway a presidential election -- could it? And it's not as though that number might actually be low because many Americans wouldn't want to break a taboo and admit racism, even to a pollster.

A couple of thoughts:

* Despite my snark, I'm not sure that the one-third of Americans who acknowledge such feelings are actually racist. Some probably are, and some are probably honest and good-hearted people who recognize the feelings for what they are and wrestle with them. Polls don't typically allow for this kind of nuance.

*That said, I've argued before that there's a certain kind of utopian conservative mindset that likes to think that the end of state-sanctioned racism in the 1960s meant the end of actual racism -- and that anybody who tries to address racism's lingering effects on society (or, God forbid, gets angry about it) is merely a race-hustler. That's a rather narrow way of thinking, in my view (and, incidentally, serves to make whites the primary victims of racism) and makes it harder to realistically grapple with issues involving race.

And of course, there's been the less utopian conservative mindset that seeks to exploit racial grievances while pretending it doesn't. But I think that's a mostly dying point of view, and I'm even willing to give George W. Bush credit for having, at the very least, the right attitudes on this subject. (I'm chalking Katrina up to incompetence and class blindness, not racism.)