Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2018
I take this opportunity to correct at least a few lingering misunderstandings of my old book. I am sometimes asked whether race relations in America, rooted in centuries of tragic and often hideous history and still injecting its peculiar bias in all social, economic and political relations in the country, could be “resolved” like a mathematical problem or an engineering project. Even after another thirty years we will be living with it, though it will have altered. I do hope that changes will proceed more rapidly than in the last five or seven years and that they will more consistently move toward a greater fulfillment of American ideals and aspirations.