Lisa Wade posts a video of a discussion between Chris Rock and John Glass in which Rock argues that what we generally refer to as “racial progress” in America is actually just white people being less crazy:
I suspect Rock’s observation may be startling to some people because America has a really strong culture of white self-congratulation in matters of race. This is a bit of a paradox because while white people understandably resent being blamed for slavery and segregation, there is a general culture of taking credit for “racial progress” among people who were not participants in the Civil Rights Movement than they were in slavery or Jim Crow.
This is more useful than it might seem, since it encourages people to see the decline of institutional racism as a bad thing. But when you think about how absolutely insane the ethical basis justifying institutional racism was, then suddenly the self-congratulation seems less deserved. Yet, even if America is grading itself on a curve, there’s a reason grade curves exist: In this case, for the first couple of centuries of American history human decency on matters of race was in short supply.