Is it anything more than a comforting delusion to say America is “post-racial?” After the election of President Obama in 2008, millions of Americans felt they could put up their feet after the generations-long march to equality. But just three years later, from the national reaction to the shooting of 17-year-old Florida teenager Trayvon Martin to a new poll in this issue of Newsweek, there are signs that the melting pot may still need some stirring.
“Despite the powerful symbolism of Obama’s election, blacks and whites are still living in two different worlds.” write Andrew Romano and Allison Samuels in this week’s Newsweek. Part of the matter, the numbers show, is that blacks and whites disagree on whether or not race is still an issue: 60 percent of blacks said that racism is a big problem today in America, while only 19 percent of whites responded yes to the same question.
It’s all too often tragedy, and not statistics, that spark national debate. As the nation asks just what happened on that Florida street when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, Newsweek takes a look at other moments in American history when racial tensions resulted in violence.
