This is a few weeks old now, but I just want to highlight this discussion about "hate groups" between @GlennLoury and @JohnHMcWhorter in which they seem to either forget or ignore the KKK and Citizens Councils of the 1950s.

It's painfully embarrassing. https://glennloury.substack.com/p/doing-our-part

These are two Black academics who are celebrated by conservatives because they frequently dismiss the notion that modern-day racism is a major problem in America. This discussion alone is enough to question their understanding of the history of racism in the US.

The suggestion that racism was *normal* in the 1950s but that it has moved to the *fringe* now is a major driving force of so many conservative attitudes on race. It's total nonsense. It's farce.

You don't really have to look any further than the words of white Southerners who opposed the Civil Rights Movement. They objected to being called racists. They said Blacks were already equal by law and that gaps in achievement were caused by genetic or cultural differences.

If this sounds familiar, it's because these attitudes are extremely prevalent today. Today's mainstream racists make the same arguments that many whites did 65 years ago: that Black achievement gaps are a result of cultural differences, not unequal laws or treatments.

This idea that racism is a fringe idea hiding in the shadows is as wrong today as it was in 1955. The US has of course made progress, and will hopefully continue to, but it still remains more popular to pretend that racist policies don't exist than to acknowledge that they do.