All You Have To Do Is Take A Road Trip To Find Out America Isn’t Racist

[Valin]

The Federalist

As I traveled across America this summer, I found something that would surprise many in the media. I found a lot of racial harmony.

David Marcus

September 5, 2019

This summer, I’ve had the chance to spend a few weeks on the road, exploring the vast, forgotten America west of the Acela corridor and east of Hollywood. In June, I drove from Brooklyn to Arkansas and back, and just last week coursed through the whole continent, landing at a beach bar in Venice Beach. One thing I noticed everywhere I went, in the bars and restaurants I haunted along the way, was a level of racial harmony that belies the notion of our nation as a hotbed of racism.

The people I met along the way, and there were a lot of them, were white, black, brown, Asian, and Native American, and they weren’t self-segregated within the establishments I found. Much the opposite: they were mixing, mingling, laughing, and drinking together without even a hint of racial tension.

So how could this be in a nation that is purportedly teeming with racial strife? Was I to believe my lying eyes and the convivial conversations I witnessed and engaged in? Or was I to believe that somewhere underneath all of this good-spirited community life lies a bedrock of inescapable racism?

(Snip)

That something to aspire to exists. It exists in bars and eateries across the bulge of our land, in the stadiums and Little League games, on the golf courses and tennis courts, in book clubs and churches and concert halls. It exists in a mixed America where people enjoy each other regardless of race, an America that to people 70 years ago would appear shocking — to some in horror, to more in wonder and hope.

So let’s cut ourselves a break. Think about where we want to go, but also appreciate and celebrate how far we have come.