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America has an inability to grow. It is simple as that, accountability is nonexistent in this country and it disrupts the step to moving on. The truth is that this country has made poor choices but disregards them and waters them down in history books and lies to people. The issue is not being bale to handle the dirty truth of what has been done. History is not the problem, being comfortable in a bad spot is the issue with America.

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Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy

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Many think America is experiencing a crisis in facts and truth, and they believe this problem ties into the current state of distrust people have in institutions. The Center recently reported that half of U.S. adults say made-up news and information is a very big problem in the country today, and about two-thirds say it causes a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events. They also say made-up news and information has a big impact on Americans' confidence in government (68%) and in each other (54%).

In this new survey we add to those insights, finding that the vast majority of adults say that Americans' level of agreement on the basic facts about issues and events is a problem. Fully 85% of adults say this is at least a moderately big problem, including 42% saying it is a very big problem. In urgency, this issue ranks alongside Americans' level of confidence in the federal government and the availability of affordable housing as problems that worry Americans. And it falls slightly above issues such as the quality of public K-12 schools and the condition of roads, bridges and public transportation across the country.

At the same time, Americans admit they at times have trouble distinguishing the truth from falsehood from certain sources. For example, nearly two-thirds (64%) of adults say it is hard to tell the difference between what's true and what's not true when listening to elected officials. Smaller shares of adults struggle with discerning facts on other media. For instance, 48% say it is hard to tell the difference between what's true and what's not true when using social media, including 16% who say it is very hard. And 41% say it is hard to tell the difference when watching cable television news.

By contrast, a majority of adults (69%) say it is not hard to determine the truth when talking with people they know, while just three-in-ten (30%) struggle with truth when talking with these individuals.

While not pronounced, there are modest differences between partisans on some of these issues. For instance, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they find it hard to tell the difference between what's true and what's not when watching cable TV news (46% vs. 38%), listening to elected officials (68% vs. 62%) or using social media (51% vs. 45%). Women are more likely than men to say they find it hard to tell the difference between what's true and not true when listening to elected officials (69% vs. 60%). And Hispanics are more likely to say they struggle with the information provided by the people they know: 40% of Hispanics find it hard to tell the difference between what's true and what's not true when listening to people they know, compared with 31% of blacks and 28% of whites.

Americans believe the government could be more transparent with the public

Not only do Americans worry about made-up information and the lack of agreement on facts, they also think that key institutional information sources withhold useful information that could appropriately be shared with the public.

A clear majority of adults say the federal government could share more with the public than it does. Fully 69% say the federal government intentionally withholds important information from the public that it could safely release. By contrast, 29% say the federal government publicly releases the important information it can safely release.

When asked exactly what important information they feel the federal government withholds, the largest shares mention domestic policy and scandals. Some 16% believe the government withholds information about specific domestic policy-related issues, which includes issues with climate and environment, issues with medicine and health, and government budgets. A similar share (14%) says the government withholds information about general government problems and scandals, such as corruption and backroom deals. The third largest category of information adults believe the government withholds is about specific foreign policy and homeland security issues (9%), including military matters and terrorism.

Political party affiliation is linked to what people feel the federal government withholds: 7% of Democrats feel the government withholds information about Trump's taxes, business dealings and behavior, compared with 1% of Republicans. Democrats are also more likely to say the government withholds information about environmental issues.

In written responses explaining their answers, respondents gave voice to a variety of suspicions about the information the government does not share, but should share. A 76-year-old man argued, "They are not honest about most of their activities since they think that they know more about what is good for the general public than we know for ourselves."

Relatedly, a Baby Boomer wrote: "The government conveniently classifies information that could sway the public to be against certain actions or investigations. The government needs to be more open to the public and trust in their understanding."

Some people believe the government's motive for keeping information secret is to protect its reputation, rather than to protect important national interests. Said one Millennial: "I think the government withholds certain pieces of information pertaining to all large-scale disasters and attacks on America and intentionally avoids information that does not show them in a favorable fashion."

One strain of thought involved people's worries that the government knows a lot more about American life than it shares. One Millennial pointed to "[t]he general state of the country without bias, almost anything about Trump and his various scandals, objective information of any kind." A generational contemporary put it this way: "Relevant statistics concerning economic trends and employment metrics, that are unflattering in light of their policies and preferred narrative"

The public's concern about information withholding extends beyond the government. Some 61% say the news media intentionally ignores stories that are important to the public, while about four-in-ten (38%) believe news media makes their best effort to cover the stories important to the public.

While partisans are relatively similar in their overall judgment that the media withholds some information, there is some disagreement about the severity of one-sided coverage. About one-in-five (19%) of those who gave written responses said that the news media is biased or focuses on opinions rather than facts. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to make this complaint (22% vs. 16%). This is in line with other findings by the Center documenting a higher level of concern among Republicans about one-sided coverage. Similar to what they feel the federal government withholds, 15% of adults say the news media does not cover domestic policy-related issues such as the justice system, crime, immigration, issues involving race and issues tied to climate. And 11% say that news media leaves out good news about Trump's accomplishments and the economy.

Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to say that news media ignores important stories about Trump's accomplishments or good news about the economy (18% vs. 1%) and stories about Democrats' problems and scandals. A statistically negligible number of Democrats complained about that, compared with 7% of Republicans.

That theme was covered by a 56-year-old man: "There hasn't been a single positive story on President Trump. He's the only sitting President to have met with a North Korean dictator, but it was spun as a negative by the media and the [Democrats]. He's the only President who has attempted to address illegal Immigration effectively, but the media and [Democrats] spin it negatively. He's a patriot who had a day job already and didn't need the mess of the presidency, but entered into it as a citizen tired of the political crap that's infected the nation..."

One typical comment about one-sided news coverage came from a 71-year-old woman: "The truth about any story they cover. The complete story and not just tidbits doled out on a hit-or-miss coverage. The 'news' reported consists more and more of gossip about individuals from the 'entertainment' industry as well as politicians and/or issues with which the media has bias. I frequently find myself asking questions about why I am hearing/seeing a story about some 'entertainers' divorce issues or a volcano eruption in Indonesia when neither of these has any direct impact on me and mine."

For a number of respondents, the issue is not so much ignored news subjects as not-fully-covered stories. Wrote one: "I think that, as much as anything, they slant coverage to reflect their own opinions. Ignore may be a strong word, downplay might be a better or word and or it may be they just put more emphasis on the stories that reflect their leanings. I also think that this is reflected on the local level as well."

Others said some specific issues are not fully covered. A Millennial man wrote, "Climate change is not given enough coverage. I believe looking at who a politician's donors are is more illuminating than simply covering some speech they gave, and yet is never in the news. News media is a business and thus ignores stories that may affect purchasing of ad space either in their newspapers or during their commercials. This means we do not get a full picture of the news, only what they allow."

The public's lack of faith in the government's and news media's abilities to fully inform the public ties to the way Americans respond to various trust-related issues. For example, adults who say that the federal government intentionally withholds important information from the public are more likely than others to say that Americans' trust in the federal government has been shrinking (80% vs. 63% among those who say the government does not release some useful information) and to say they are not confident that elected officials act in the public's best interest (67% vs. 53%).

They are also more likely to point out problems, such as Americans' level of agreement on the basic facts about issues or events (89% vs. 78%) and Americans' level of confidence in the federal government (89% vs. 80%).

Similar patterns exist for adults who believe that news media intentionally ignores some stories that are important to the public. These adults are more than three times as likely as those who say news media makes their best effort to cover the stories that are important to the public to say that they are not confident that news media acts in the best interest of the public (71% vs. 22%). And 45% of those who say news media ignores stories also say that it is hard to tell the difference between what is and is not true when watching cable television news, compared with 35% of those who believe news media is doing their best.

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3. Americans' struggles with truth, accuracy and accountability

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Many think America is experiencing a crisis in facts and truth, and they believe this problem ties into the current state of distrust people have in

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The history of America has placed and shaped us to where we are now. Both good and bad have come out of what the history of America holds. In some cases America's history is full heartedly responsible for how it turned out. But then America has to take accountability and make up for their mistakes, we cant continue to blame how the country was set up with our inability to have proper inequality and peace.

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox Editor's note: This story led off this week's Mississippi Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers' inboxes with trends and top stories about education in Mississippi. Subscribe today!
Nearly 70 percent of Mississippi residents are unable to pass the U.S. citizenship test, which assesses basic knowledge of American history, according to new survey results released earlier this month by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Scores on the 20-question test placed Mississippi near the bottom nationally; residents of only three states - Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana - had lower scores.

The survey asked 41,000 Americans adults to show their knowledge of American history by, for example, placing presidents in context of historic events, naming some of the 13 original states, and determining the time periods of various wars. A score of 60 percent or higher is considered passing. Nationwide, only 40 percent of Americans received a passing score. Vermont was the only state in which the majority of residents passed, with 53 percent of Vermont's survey takers scoring 60 percent or higher.

Survey respondents had the most trouble with questions that asked them to name the year the U.S. Constitution was written and state the number of constitutional amendments. A quarter of Americans were unaware that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech.

Officials from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation say these results point to longstanding problems with the way American history is taught in schools. "American history education is not working, as students are asked to memorize dates, events and leaders, which the poll results shows are not retained in adulthood," said Arthur Levine, president of the foundation, in a statement. "Based on our research, this is not an issue of whether high school history teachers are adequately prepared or whether kids study American history in school. The answer to both questions is yes. This is an issue of how we teach American history. Now it is too often made boring and robbed of its capacity to make sense of a chaotic present and inchoate future ... This requires a fundamental change in how American history is taught and learned to make it relevant to our students' lives, captivating and inclusive to all Americans."

This is not the first time a report has found Americans' understanding of U.S. history to be lacking. Results of a U.S. history test administered in 2014 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that although scores among eighth-grade students increased from 1994 to 2014, they remained stagnant between 2010 and 2014. Only 18 percent of students scored at or above proficient on U.S. History in 2014.
This story about history education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Mississippi has faced its own shortcomings in teaching important American history topics, like civil rights. A 2017 investigation by The Hechinger Report and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that even though Mississippi's social studies standards were once considered a model for other states, many school districts rely on old textbooks that don't adequately teach or address civil rights issues.

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Most Mississippians can't pass U.S. citizenship exam. Is American history education the problem?

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox Editor's note: This story led off this week's Mississippi Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers' inboxes with trends and top stories about education in Mississippi. Subscribe today! Nearly 70 percent of Mississippi residents are unable to pass the U.S.

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Racial optimism was widely high in black Americans once Obama was elected, but though there are still many cases of underlying racial pessimism. Although Obama's election into office looked like a win for black people it was a good look for America, giving false hope to black Americans, thinking that they have a chance to make it to the top in a country run my white supremacist.

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This article appears in the Fall 2014 issue of The American Prospect magazine.

Not so long ago, black Americans were giddy witnesses to what many regarded as a miracle. Election night, November 4, 2008, seemed to be a millennial turning point as a majority of Americans entrusted an African American with the nation's highest office and greatest powers. "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible," Barack Obama declared, "... tonight is your answer." Against the backdrop of that high, a downturn was inevitable. But what many blacks are feeling now is more than a correction; it is depression.

The racial front is the site of especially keen disappointment. In a 2013 survey pegged to the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the Pew Research Center found that less than half (45 percent) of all Americans agreed that the country had made "a lot" of progress toward racial equality during the previous half-century. Among blacks, only 32 percent shared the same view. That dourness stems in part from persistent hard times. The economic meltdown that accompanied Obama to the White House (and probably played a major role in his initial election) devastated the earnings and assets of black Americans. Since his election, they have not recouped their losses in what has only been a tepid recovery tipped in favor of the haves. Adding to the unhappiness is anger at the recalcitrance Obama has faced since the outset of his administration, a resistance mainly from Republicans that many observers believe is substantially fueled by racism.

Slumping morale among blacks, however, is attributable to more than frustration with Obama's enemies; it also reflects frustration with the president himself. Although the overwhelming majority of politically active blacks supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 and continue to rally behind him defensively, an appreciable number feel let down. They maintain that he has been altogether too fearful of being charged with racial favoritism and has done too little to educate the public about the peculiar racial hazards that African Americans routinely face.

Beneath the malaise is a deep current of racial pessimism that has a long history in American and African American thought. Pessimists believe that racial harmony predicated on fairness is not part of the American future. They posit that the United States will not overcome its tragic racial past. They maintain that blacks are not and cannot become members of the American family (even with a black family occupying the White House). They believe that the United States is a white nation that will always be governed on behalf of white folk.

For pessimists, the Obama presidency is no sign of racial transcendence; to the contrary, it is a demonstration of the intractability of American pigmentocracy. For them, the Obama ascendancy shows that in order to rise to the top of American politics, a black politician must be willing to forgo substantively challenging the racial status quo (though he is allowed to cavil about it rhetorically). For them, the Obama administration simply mirrors the racial diversification of an existing order in which a relatively small sector of upper-crust blacks prosper while the condition of the black masses stagnates or deteriorates-the consequence of a misbegotten theory of racial trickle-down. For them, the Obama era is littered with bitter incongruity: While a black man is commander-in-chief, Michael Brown and thousands like him are stalked, harassed, brutalized, and occasionally killed in Ferguson-like locales across America.
SUPPORT THE PROSPECT
The pedigree of black racial pessimism is impressive. In its ranks one finds such figures as Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Randall Robinson, and the extraordinary W.E.B. Du Bois. One encounters Frederick Douglass declaring in 1847, "I cannot have any love for this country ... or for its Constitution. I desire to see its overthrow as speedily as possible, and its Constitution shriveled in a thousand fragments." In that tradition, one also finds Derrick Bell, professor of law at Harvard, teaching in the 1990s that the United States is irredeemably imprisoned by its past, that "racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society," and that "black people will never gain full equality in this country."

The tradition of black racial pessimism has its white counterpart. According to Thomas Jefferson, "The two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government." Alexis de Tocqueville doubted that "the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing," but believed "the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere." According to Abraham Lincoln, differences between blacks and whites "will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

But the pessimists, black and white, have not been the only influence on American thought about the prospects for racial progress. Arrayed against them are optimists who contend that blacks are (or can become) members of the American family and insist that racial harmony bottomed on fairness is attainable. This, in fact, has been the predominant tradition among blacks. Its adherents include Booker T. Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Mary McLeod Bethune, Jesse Jackson, and John Lewis (joined by whites such as the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton). The most memorable spokesman for the optimistic tradition was Martin Luther King Jr. On April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, he told his followers to take heart because he knew that, eventually, they would overcome the obstacles they faced. He knew this because he had "been to the mountaintop" and glimpsed the Promised Land, though he might not make it there himself.

King was vague, however, about the Promised Land's boundaries and topography. He had famously spoken of a nation where individuals will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Yet that formulation is popular partly because it is open to contending interpretations. Is it a condemnation of all racial distinctions? Or is it a condemnation only of invidious racial distinctions? Is it meant to posit a rule of non-discrimination that should go into effect immediately even at the cost of barring efforts to rectify past racial wrongdoing? Or is it meant to posit a rule of nondiscrimination that should go into effect only after the consequences of past wrongdoings have been ameliorated?

These questions underlie the debate that has been raging for decades over competing conceptions of the racial Promised Land. In one conception, the Promised Land is a society henceforth substantially free of intentional racial discrimination in major domains of the public sphere. In this society, no effort is made to rectify the oppressive consequences of past racial misconduct because, it is argued, trying to do so is futile, unfair to those innocent of past wrongdoing, and conducive to the perpetuation of race-mindedness. This view has been propounded vigorously in the legal writings of Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, mainly in critiques of affirmative action. Chief Justice John Roberts, also a champion of this view, expressed it epigrammatically when, abjuring a race-conscious plan for school integration, he quipped that the best way to stop racial discrimination is to stop racially discriminating-no matter whether the aim is to assist or oppress a vulnerable group. Under this conception, we enter the racial Promised Land when racial discrimination is a negligible feature of social life, even if the vestiges of racial subordination in the past are evident and consequential. Let's call this model of racial justice the conservative conception of the racial Promised Land.
SUPPORT THE PROSPECT
The progressive conception of the racial Promised Land is more ambitious. It envisions two essential landmarks. The first is the requirement of the conservatives that invidious racial discrimination be reduced to a negligible influence. The second condition is that the vestiges of past discrimination-the racial gaps that so dramatically scar the social landscape-be erased. Pursuant to the progressive perspective, we will reach the racial Promised Land when blackness is no longer a uniform that, holding other variables steady, signals that its wearer bears a notably higher risk than whites of premature death, impoverishment, unemployment, incarceration, victimization by criminality, homelessness, police harassment, and similar afflictions.

Today, one can go into a hospital, visit the ward for newborns, and make accurate estimates about the babies' varying life trajectories on the basis of their racial identities.

When accurate estimates of this sort are no longer possible, progressives contend, we will have reached the racial Promised Land.

Some observers insist that what I have dubbed the conservative model of the racial Promised Land is at hand or at least nearby. They maintain that, for the most part, we have overcome. They proclaim "Mission Accomplished" or at least mission near-accomplished.

This is mistaken. Intentional invidious racial discrimination constitutes a force in American life that is far from negligible. It is a substantial headwind that blacks and other racial minorities face in many key areas, including housing, finance, employment, criminal justice, electoral politics, and markets for romance and marriage. There is a library of empirical literature establishing this fact beyond sensible controversy-studies based on similarly situated but racially disparate testers who meet different fates when they seek to buy automobiles, rent housing, get jobs, or obtain loans. And then there are the lessons of everyday life that suggest forcefully that in crucial interactions with police officers, prosecutors, judges, and other authorities armed with discretion, outcomes differ, all too often, depending on the race of the person being assessed. It is difficult to imagine that the dismal train of events surrounding the deaths of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown would have been identical had they been white.

Even more distant is the progressive conception of the racial Promised Land. In practically every key index of well-being, a chasm separates the circumstances in which whites and blacks typically find themselves. The income gap separating blacks and whites widened from about $19,000 in the late 1960s to about $27,000 in 2011. The wealth gap increased from $75,000 in 1984 to $85,000 in 2011. Blacks are nearly three times more likely to live in deep poverty than whites. Black men are six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated. And on. And on. And on.

We have failed to reach the racial Promised Land in either its conservative or its progressive definition. With respect to both of these destinations, our society remains far afield. Still, I put myself in the optimistic camp.

Why?

I am hopeful first and foremost because of the predominant trajectory of African Americans-a history that John Hope Franklin framed with the apt title From Slavery to Freedom. In 1860, four million African Americans were enslaved while another half-million were free but devoid of fundamental rights in many of the jurisdictions where they lived. In 1860, the very term "African American" was something of an oxymoron because the Supreme Court had ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that no black, free or enslaved, could be a citizen of the United States. But within a decade, the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) established birthright citizenship and required all states to accord all persons due process and equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) prohibited states from withholding the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. People who had been sold on the auction block as youngsters helped to govern their locales as public officials when they were adults. In 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi resigned from the United States Senate to join the Confederate States of America, which he led as president. In 1870, Hiram Revels, the first black member of Congress, occupied the seat that Davis abandoned.

The First Reconstruction was overwhelmed by a devastating white supremacist reaction. But the most fundamental reforms it established proved resilient, providing the basis for a Second Reconstruction from the 1950s to the 1970s. During that period, too, the distance traveled by blacks was astonishing. In 1950, segregation was deemed to be consistent with federal constitutional equal protection. No federal law prevented proprietors of hotels, restaurants, and other privately owned public accommodations from engaging in racial discrimination. No federal law prohibited private employers from discriminating on a racial basis against applicants for jobs or current employees. No federal law effectively counteracted racial disenfranchisement. No federal law outlawed racial discrimination in private housing transactions. In contrast, by 1970 federal constitutional law thoroughly repudiated the lie of separate but equal. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbade racial discrimination in privately owned places of public accommodation and many areas of private employment. The 1965 Voting Rights Act provided the basis for strong prophylactic action against racial exclusion at the ballot box. The 1968 Fair Housing Act addressed racial exclusion in a market that had been zealously insulated against federal regulation. None of these interventions were wholly successful. All were compromised. All occasioned backlash. But the racial situation in 1970 and afterwards was dramatically better than what it had been in 1950 and before.

Today, at a moment when progress has stalled, we need to recall how dramatically and unexpectedly conditions sometimes change. Until recently who'd-a thunk it possible for the president to be an African American? In the 1980s, I used to ask law students how long affirmative action programs ought to last. Champions of such programs, seeking to ensure their longevity, would say that affirmative action would be needed until the country elected a black president. That reply would elicit appreciative laughter as listeners supposed that that formula would preserve affirmative action for at least a century. But then along came Barack Obama and with him the remark that soon became a cliché: "I never thought that I'd live to see a black president."

Obama's election is much more than a monument to one politician's talent and good fortune. Changes in public attitudes, law, and custom have clearly elevated the fortunes of African Americans as individuals and black America as a collectivity. Hard facts may give plausibility to the pessimistic tradition, but they make the optimistic tradition compelling. Despite the many wrongs that remain to be righted, blacks in America confront fewer racist impediments now than ever before in the history of the United States. The courage, intelligence, persistence, idealism, and sacrifice of Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks, Julian Bond and Bob Moses, Medgar Evers and Bayard Rustin, Viola Liuzzo and Vernon Dahmer-and countless other tribunes for racial justice-have not been expended for naught. The facts of day-to-day life allow blacks to sing more confidently than ever before James Weldon Johnson's magnificent hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing," often referred to as the Black National Anthem:

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past

has taught us

Sing a song full of the hope that the present

has brought us

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on till victory is won.

My optimism involves more than a sociological prediction. I am also swayed by my intuition regarding which of these hypotheses-the pessimistic or the optimistic-will do the most good. Hope is a vital nutrient for effort; without it, there is no prospect for achievement.

The belief that we can overcome makes more realistic the possibility that we shall overcome. Optimism gives buoyancy to thinking that might otherwise degenerate into nihilism

, encourages solidarity in those who might otherwise be satisfied by purely selfish indulgence, invites strategic planning that can usefully harness what might otherwise be impotent indignation, and inspires efforts that might otherwise be avoided due to fatalism.

On Election Day 1996, exit polling showed General Colin Powell beating President Bill Clinton by a comfortable margin. But Powell was not Clinton's opponent. Senator Bob Dole was. Powell had considered seeking the Republican Party nomination but declined in the end to do so. Before he made that decision, polls suggested that he could win the nomination and the general election, but friends were skeptical. Powell recalls that Earl Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, told him, "Look, man ... [w]hen [white voters] go in that booth, they ain't going to vote for you." Maybe Graves was correct. Real voting might have produced different results from the polls. Furthermore, whereas the actual candidates had suffered a year of merciless scrutiny on the campaign trail, Powell on Election Day was a mere hypothetical candidate who suffered from none of the wear and tear that a presidential contest exacts. At the end of a campaign, the general might not have remained so attractive. Still, Powell's apparent popularity does provide a basis for conjecturing that America's readiness to elect a black president had been an unrecognized part of the political landscape for longer than many had appreciated. Powell may well have denied himself the opportunity to make a successful historic leap by being self-defeatingly pessimistic.

A major fear of many blacks is that acknowledging progress will prompt underestimation of racial obstacles that blacks at every socioeconomic level continue to face. When Americans are polled about their perceptions of racial affairs, whites are typically more upbeat than blacks. The more affluent they are, the more upbeat white observers tend to be. Inordinately impressed by progress, they all too often prematurely declare victory over racism.

Although complacency nourished by an overly rosy view of racial affairs is a real danger, I stand by my conviction that a clear-eyed assessment favors black optimism. Who, after all, have been the figures most beneficial to blacks? Was it the Martin Delany who decamped for Africa, thinking America to be irremediably racist? Or was it the Martin Delany who returned, recruited blacks for the Union, and participated significantly in Southern politics during Reconstruction? Was it the pre-1966 Stokely Carmichael who sang "We Shall Overcome" in the splendid early days of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)? Or was it the post-1966 Stokely Carmichael (later renamed Kwame Ture) whose impatient bitterness helped to destroy the SNCC and rationalize an indulgent exile to Guinea that squandered a substantial talent? Was it my long-time colleague of blessed memory, Derrick Bell, who posited the permanence of racist white dominance? Or was it a student who rightly admired Professor Bell but eschewed his pessimism and followed a different path, a black student who, years later, put Bell's hypothesis to a test by seeking the highest elected office in the land under the slogan "Yes We Can!"?

That student, of course, was Barack Obama, and his presidency has been the setting for much debate between pessimists and optimists. Some detractors, perhaps the angriest, started from a position of raised expectations. They thought that Obama embodied the "audacity of hope" and that he would somehow bring about sweeping changes. Disappointed, they have expressed themselves in the angry, accusatory rhetoric of betrayal. Obama, Cornel West charges, "posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit." Others condemn Obama but without disappointment. They see their low expectations as having been validated.

Certain pessimists have maintained that Obama's election indicated little in terms of "real" racial progress. They even discount the symbolic significance of his ascendancy, stressing his exceptionality. Although he calls himself black, Obama is the offspring of a black African father and a white American mother and is thus distinguished genealogically from most African Americans. Much was made of his Muslim-sounding name. But some observers maintain that popular acceptance of that, too, should be viewed skeptically. It would have signaled more, they argue, had America elected a black person raised in, say, Detroit with a name such as Tyrone Washington or Jamal Jefferson. Pessimists argue that, substantively, the Obama presidency has delivered no more to blacks than would have been delivered by any other centrist-liberal Democrat (say, Hillary Clinton), and that in certain respects the Obama presidency delivered less because Obama sought excessively to prove that he was a president for all Americans and not merely black Americans. They contend that Obama's blackness was an asset that he used for personal marketing and that the white establishment seized upon for advertising, "The United States cannot sensibly be accused of practicing or condoning racism! It just elected a black president!" Pessimists will now also enlist the horrifying events in Ferguson, Missouri, to reinforce their claim that despite the civil rights movement, antidiscrimination legislation, affirmative action, and the election of Obama, the narrative of race relations in America is a doleful tale-not a march upward from slavery to freedom, but a trek sideways from plantation to ghetto.

What is an optimist in the waning years of the Obama presidency to say in the face of this challenge?

Obama's election signaled a dramatic, substantive change in racial beliefs and attitudes. In 1960, his victory would have been impossible: Too many whites would have been unwilling to vote for a black candidate-any black candidate-because of doubts about the capacities of anyone of black African ancestry. Recall that there were no black cabinet officers until Johnson appointed Robert Weaver as secretary of housing and urban development in 1966, and no black Supreme Court justices until Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall in 1967. The specter of black intellectual and characterological deficiency stunted the careers of many talented blacks, and still does. That Obama was able to win the presidency-twice-is a sign that rumors of racial inferiority, while still extant, are much diminished in influence.

In thinking about the meaning of Obama, it is important, too, to focus on the special status of the presidency. The person who occupies that office is not only the head of the executive branch of the federal government, the person who nominates all federal judges, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and thus a person with the wherewithal to destroy most, if not all, of humankind. The president is also the nation's mourner-in-chief, booster-in-chief, spouse-in-chief, and parent-in-chief.

That a black man has been the master of the White House for the past six years does indeed reflect and reinforce a remarkable socio-psychological transformation in the American racial scene. If that is "tokenism," give us more of it.

I have emphasized progress that blacks have made in absolute terms: where they stood 50 years ago and where they stand today. But what about the position of blacks relative to whites-those yawning gaps in wealth, income, educational attainment, and risk of imprisonment that have remained unclosed and that have, in some ways, widened even further during Obama's tenure? There is no use denying that reality. America remains racially stratified and will continue to be long after the Obama presidency.

There is also no use, however, in denying other facets of the American racial reality. One is a comparative view. In considering the appropriate attitude to adopt toward America-allegiance, for example, or dis-affiliation-it is sensible to compare the United States to other divided societies. Negrophobia in America is, alas, all too present. But it pales in comparison with the prejudice against racial, ethnic, religious, and national minorities in many countries around the globe. As bad as the American racial problem is, as urgently as it calls for concentrated attention, its condition is less dire and more encouraging than might be gleaned from an analysis that views the American situation in isolation, divorced from international comparisons.

There is also no good purpose served by ignoring manifestations of progress that display themselves even in heartrending crises. Consider the events in Ferguson. The killing of the unarmed teenager, the callous inattentiveness to his body, the militarized police response to protest, and the dubious investigation by local authorities of this tragic death display much of what is terrible in American race relations: an atavistic fear of young black men; quick resort to excessive force against African Americans; racial residential separation; black powerlessness that foments resentment; white dominance that encourages contempt; an utter lack of mutual trust. But the events in Ferguson have also revealed other responses. The federal government took note of what happened and actively involved itself via the president, attorney general, and the director of the FBI. The Ferguson tragedy became the leading news story all over the country. Blacks have not been the only ones calling the police to account and demanding reform. Whites from various walks of life, including right-wing politicians like Rand Paul, have also been doing so. Never in American history, in analogous circumstances, has there been a higher level of interracial empathy.

Overcoming the racial burdens-individual, communal, institutional-that encumber us will take unremitting effort, major deployments of intelligence and imagination, daunting amounts of time, huge expenditures of money, and the resolute conviction that America's racial affairs can and will improve. Is the uncertain prospect of a better future worth that investment? The lessons of American history and a comparison of our society with others around the world impel me to say yes. I am a racial optimist. Only time will tell whether my faith is wise.

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Black America's Promised Land: Why I Am Still a Racial Optimist

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This article appears in the Fall 2014 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Not so long ago, black Americans were giddy witnesses to what many regarded as a miracle. Election night, November 4, 2008, seemed to be a millennial turning point as a majority of Americans entrusted an African American with the nation's highest office and greatest powers.

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This article primarily focuses on the history of African-Americans migrating to the "promised land" which we now call America. The amount of mistreatment that was endured by African-Americans did not correlate with the famous "promised land" they were supposed to get. So no we have not reached the promised land even in the past there was still underlying hate towards Black people.

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With the promise of freedom and new economic and educational opportunities, Kansas attracted many African Americans in its territorial days, through statehood, and into the 20th century. Slavery existed in the Kansas Territory, but slave holdings were small compared to the South. Many black migrants also came to the territory as hired laborers, while some traveled as escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad. In the 1860s, others joined the Union Army, and some moved from the South in large groups during the Kansas Exodus, a mass migration of freedpeople during the 1870s and 1880s. As a territory that had a long and violent history of pre-Civil War contests over slavery, Kansas emerged as the "quintessential free state" and seemed like a promised land for African Americans who searched for what they called a "New Canaan."

Slavery in Antebellum Kansas and the Underground Railroad

Although there were relatively few slaves in territorial Kansas, enslaved men and women provided important labor along the Missouri-Kansas border. Unlike large plantations in the South, slavery in the border region existed in small holdings, permitted closer contact between slaves and slaveholders, and allowed slaves to hire themselves out with the permission of owners.

The issue of slavery's expansion into the West turned Kansas into a battleground as it prepared to enter the Union. A bill passed in 1860 would abolish slavery in Kansas, but before then, antislavery settlers campaigned against proslavery factions. Abolitionists raised money for fugitives through aid societies and publicly argued against slavery on lecture circuits. Daniel Anthony, the brother of woman suffragist Susan B. Anthony, moved to Kansas in 1854 with the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society for the express purpose of fighting against the extension of slavery into the territory. Antislavery activities could be as violent and sporadic as John Brown's vigilante raids on proslavery neighbors, or they could be more cautious and systematic, as were the secret Underground Railroad "stations" meant to shuttle escaped slaves to freedom.

The Underground Railroad was not actually a train, but rather a large, national network intended to help fugitives escape from slavery into northern states and Canada. White and African American abolitionists created a large but informal network of hiding places in farmhouses and in the woods throughout the South, so that conductors could help passengers travel from station to station under the cover of night. Fugitive slaves and those who aided them risked their own safety, especially after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act required the return of runaway slaves to their owners even if they had made it into a free state or territory. A 19th century minister once claimed that the number of escaped slaves who passed through his town of Lawrence, Kansas, amounted to $100,000 worth of property during the territorial period. Depots in Kansas proved to be especially important to fugitive slaves from Missouri en route to Nebraska, Iowa, and even Canada.

Quindaro residents established several Underground Railroad stations, where many African American slaves sought refuge on their way to freedom.

In some cases, abolitionists established new towns near the Missouri-Kansas border to reinforce the "cause of liberty." An example of such a town is Quindaro, located in present-day Kansas City, Kansas. The name, Quindaro, was a Wyandotte word meaning "bundle of sticks," which evoked an ideal of strength in unity. The town, founded in 1856, quickly grew because of its port near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, as well as its subsequent establishment of surveyors, businesses, and stone and brick yards. The boom of Quindaro's first year did not sustain the community for long, though, and by 1862 the state legislature had taken measures that led to the voiding of the town's incorporation. However, during its existence, Quindaro residents established several Underground Railroad stations, where many African American slaves sought refuge on their way to freedom.

An example of a frequently used station was Quindaro's high school for African Americans, established by a white minister, Eben Blatchley, in 1857. In 1865, Blatchley named the school Freedmen's University, and in 1881 it was finally renamed Western University, with the sponsorship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The school lasted much longer than the town, gaining support from local communities and the state legislature and earning a reputation as a school where African American students could excel academically until its closure in 1943.

The Underground Railroad activities at Blatchley's school maintained secrecy during the antebellum period, but in 1911, the school and the Quindaro community created a public reminder of its anti-slavery stance by installing a life-size statue of John Brown. For his leadership in a failed insurrection of slaves, Brown had been charged with treason and hanged for his attempt to start a slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry in 1859. The statue of the martyred hero stood in the front lawn of the school with a dedication: "Erected to the memory of John Brown by a grateful people."

War and Increased Demands for Education

As skirmishes increased in Kansas in the years before the Civil War, so did a military buildup that included both whites and African Americans. Black soldiers joined Union troops as early as 1862 in the First Kansas Colored Infantry in the town of Fort Scott. Earning the distinction as the first African Americans engaged in Civil War battles, their initial combat took place at the Battle of Island Mound in Bates County, Missouri, in October 1862, even though the troops were not officially recognized by the federal army until a few months later.

For some, joining the military also increased their chances with literacy in an era when it was otherwise illegal in many states to teach slaves how to read.

Both escaped slaves and freedmen joined the Union Army because it ensured a certain amount of freedom for African American soldiers. For some, joining the military also increased their chances with literacy in an era when it was otherwise illegal in many states to teach slaves how to read. While in camp, soldiers would share each other's letters and teach each other how to read the Bible. In 1865, when soldiers in the First Kansas Colored Infantry gathered their families to settle in Fort Scott, the Northwestern Freedmen's Aid Commission constructed a schoolhouse behind the officers' quarters of the military fort. At one point, the school served 160 children during the day and 75 adults in the evening.

Eventually the legislature would levy taxes on property owned by African Americans to be appropriated for such schools, but until then local communities and aid societies maintained black schools. Most schools for African Americans were separate from white schools, but since the territorial legislature had ordered that schools should be available without charge for all children between the ages of five and 21 years, a certain commitment to African American education remained. By the end of the 1880s, Fort Scott had opened an additional school for children of African American Union soldiers. By 1956, Fort Scott had opened a total of four schools for black students, including one that the inventor George Washington Carver briefly attended as a teenager.

As more African Americans migrated to Kansas after the Civil War, the demand for education also increased. Federal assistance, however, did not. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a branch of the War Department in the federal government, had opened in March 1865 with the purpose of supervising relief activities for refugees and freedpeople. The efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau included providing medicine, land, rations of clothing and food, and education, as well as providing overall support for African Americans' transition from slavery to freedom. The existence of the Freedmen's Bureau was threatened by President Andrew Johnson, whose second veto of its renewal and expansion in 1866 was overturned by Congress. Although the Freedmen's Bureau continued until 1872, its funding was significantly cut by 1869 and its operations were mostly suspended. Therefore, without much federal assistance, African Americans were left to depend on each other, on white reformers, and on small organizations to fund their schools. As African American populations increased in towns such as Lawrence, Topeka, Leavenworth, and Tonganoxie, Kansas-based charity organizations also demanded that public school districts assume more responsibility for African American schools.

In general, white Kansans supported state and municipal legislation to fund African American education, although they did not necessarily call for the integration of public schools. Black students would continue to attend separate (although undoubtedly unequal) schools as long as the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson United States Supreme Court decision upheld the legality of segregation. In Leavenworth, for example, African Americans had their own school, but some described it as a "hut" situated in a "low, dirty-looking hollow close to a stinking old muddy creek, with a railroad running almost directly over the building."

Despite such conditions and because of the voracious appetite for education among African Americans, civil rights organizations chipped away at Jim Crow laws that segregated white and black school children. Lawyers took 11 desegregation cases through courts of appeal up to the Kansas Supreme Court until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas finally went to the United States Supreme Court in 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided against "separate but equal" policies of the past and called for the eventual integration of public spaces, including schools.

The Exodusters

After the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the cattle industry grew, and so did the number of African American cowboys throughout the West, but the largest catalyst for population increase was a desire among African Americans to escape the South and migrate to a free state. In the 1870s and 1880s with the failure of the federal government to provide adequate amounts of land, jobs, education, and protection for the millions of newly freed African Americans, thousands left their Southern homes. In 1879, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave from Tennessee, became known as the leader of the "Exoduster Movement." Kansas-based white reformers, such as Elizabeth Comstock, reported that African Americans suffered atrocities in Southern states: "Hanging, shooting, whipping, and mutilation have not ceased." Lynchings of African Americans actually increased nationwide between the 1880s and 1930s, totaling over 3,000 during the period.

Kansas was not immune from Jim Crow segregation, race riots, or violence. Newspapers recorded incidents of a lynching of an African American man in Fort Scott and white mobs attacking African Americans held in local jails in Leavenworth, Topeka, and Kansas City. Gordon Parks, author, photographer, and director, spent his early years in Fort Scott, which he fictionalized as Cherokee Flats in the 1963 novel, The Learning Tree. His memory of Kansas included tranquil hills and the smell of delicious barbecue, but he also detailed memories of segregated restaurants, schools, and graveyards in his writing. For example, Parks described the protagonist's hometown as especially complicated because of its position so close to the Missouri border, where the laws "stood for equal rights, but the law...never bothered to enforce such laws in such books."

The idea that Kansas had a particular claim to freedom still appealed to African Americans, who saw migrating to Kansas as a positive alternative to their current conditions. "Leave the south if you have to crawl, come where you can have some protection," the Afro-American Advocate claimed. Many African Americans thought of making new starts in the relatively young state of Kansas, where the possibility of "growing up with the country" reflected their optimism for more freedom. Some white politicians encouraged rhetoric that portrayed Kansas as especially welcoming to African Americans. For example, Jacob Winter, a state senator and civil right proponent, referenced Kansas as "this State that was born free; this State that stood in the front ranks in the great contest for freedom."

Pap Singleton's fliers urging African Americans to "Ho for Kansas!" ultimately prompted tens of thousands of individuals and families to leave the South. In an issue of the Wyandotte Gazette, the Freedmen's State Central Organization called on several counties to prepare for the influx of refugees from southern states because "the dictates of humanity, as well as the honor and good name of Kansas demand that the destitute of this class of people should not be neglected, nor permitted to suffer for the necessary wants of life."

Although Kansas had claimed to be the quintessential "free state," Exodusters did not necessarily find the absolute freedom and equality that they had hoped to discover there. New residents brought with them large hopes for land ownership, but could not always successfully negotiate the purchase of property from white landowners. Many had to rely on aid societies, such as the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, for food and supplies. Local aid societies also intervened with Exodusters to provide them support for acquiring housing, job training, and education.

African Americans often established "black towns" or neighborhood colonies as distinctly separate from white communities. Segregation in black towns often meant fewer prospects of buying land and increasing job opportunities, but segregation also meant that black communities could concentrate their efforts on social uplift in their own communities. For example, in 1877, when 300 migrants from Scott County, Kentucky settled Nicodemus in Graham County, Kansas, they established their own churches and a school. They also prohibited saloons or other "houses of ill-fame" within the colony's first five years. The trustees of Nicodemus recruited new residents by posting advertisements that referred to their establishment as a "beautiful Promised Land."

In another black town, Tennesseetown, founded in 1880 within the city limits of Topeka, residents developed neighborhood improvement clubs, created a community library, and sent their children to a school that claimed to be the first African American kindergarten west of the Mississippi River. Elisha Scott, an African American lawyer who attended the Tennesseetown Kindergarten as a child, went on to establish a career as a civil rights lawyer and helped to argue the Brown v. Board of Topeka case before the United States Supreme Court. The court case, initiated in Topeka, Kansas, would not bring a conclusion to the state's frequent contests over the meaning of freedom, but would stand as another important watershed moment in their long and ongoing struggle for civil rights that would continue for decades.

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Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865

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With the promise of freedom and new economic and educational opportunities, Kansas attracted many African Americans in its territorial days, through statehood, and into the 20th century. Slavery existed in the Kansas Territory, but slave holdings were small compared to the South.

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The main focus of this article leans towards the statement that America is racist. America's freedom, equality, and any kind of prosperity is in favor of white Americans. Structural racism still lies within our country and ultimately enables the black Americans to move upward in any kind of way.

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At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

Throughout this country's history, the hallmarks of American democracy - opportunity, freedom, and prosperity - have been largely reserved for white people through the intentional exclusion and oppression of people of color. The deep racial and ethnic inequities that exist today are a direct result of structural racism: the historical and contemporary policies, practices, and norms that create and maintain white supremacy.

At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

For decades, our researchers have called attention to the role of race and racism in our public and private institutions and offered evidence-based solutions for how to address these inequities. Our scholars will play a crucial role as we continue to elevate the public discourse around race and racism in America.

Urban Next50 What would it take to overcome the damaging effects of structural racism and ensure a more equitable future?

Interim Project Director, Housing Crisis Research Collaborative

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At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

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In this article I think the main point that was important was that they addressed that America is not necessarily racist as a whole but it speaks a-lot that more than half the country voted for Donal Trump. The country itself was built on white supremacy and racist individuals so yes America is racist.

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Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He said on Fox News last week that "our systems are not racist." Credit... Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Last Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added himself to the long list of Republicans who have denied the existence of systemic racism in this country. Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that "our systems are not racist. America's not a racist country."

Graham argued that the country can't be racist because both Barack Obama and Kamala Harris had been elected and somehow, their overcoming racial hurdles proves the absence of racial hurdles. His view seems to be that the exceptions somehow negated the rule.

In the rebuttal to President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress, the other senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, parroted Graham and became an apologist for these denials of racism, saying too that the country wasn't racist. He argued that people are "making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress at all, by doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal."

Scott's argument seems to leave open the possibility that America may have been a racist country but that it has matured out of it, that it has graduated into egalitarianism.

I personally don't make much of Scott's ability to reason. This is the same man who said in March that "woke supremacy," whatever that is, "is as bad as white supremacy." There is no world in which recent efforts at enlightenment can be equated to enslavement, lynching and mass incarceration. None.

It seems to me that the disingenuousness on the question of racism is largely a question of language. The question turns on another question: "What, to you, is America?" Is America the people who now inhabit the land, divorced from its systems and its history? Or, is the meaning of America inclusive of those systems and history?

When people say that America is a racist country, they don't necessarily mean that all or even most Americans are consciously racist. However, it is important to remember that nearly half the country just voted for a full-on racist in Donald Trump, and they did so by either denying his racism, becoming apologists for it, or applauding it. What do you call a country thus composed?

Historically, however, there is no question that the country was founded by racists and white supremacists, and that much of the early wealth of this country was built on the backs of enslaved Africans, and much of the early expansion came at the expense of the massacre of the land's Indigenous people and broken treaties with them.

Eight of the first 10 presidents personally enslaved Africans. In 1856, the chief justice of the United States wrote in the infamous ruling on the Dred Scott case that Black people "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

The country went on to fight a Civil War over whether some states could maintain slavery as they wished. Even some of the people arguing for, and fighting for, an end to slavery had expressed their white supremacist beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln said during his famous debates against Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 that among white people and Black ones "there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man."

Some will concede the historical point and insist on the progress point, arguing that was then and this is now, that racism simply doesn't exist now as it did then. I would agree. American racism has evolved and become less blunt, but it has not become less effective. The knife has simply been sharpened. Now systems do the work that once required the overt actions of masses of individual racists.

So, what does it mean for a system to be racist? Does the appellation depend on the system in question being openly, explicitly racist from top to bottom, or simply that there is some degree of measurable bias embedded in those systems? I assert the latter.

America is not the same country it was, but neither is it the country it purports to be. On some level this is a tension between American idealism and American realism, between an aspiration and a current condition.

And the precise way we phrase the statement makes all the difference: America's systems - like its criminal justice, education and medical systems - have a pro-white/anti-Black bias, and an extraordinary portion of America denies or defends those biases.

As Mark Twain once put it: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

Being imprecise or undecided with our language on this subject contributes to the murkiness - and to the myth that the question of whether America is racist is difficult to answer and therefore the subject of genuine debate among honest intellectuals.

Saying that America is racist is not a radical statement. If that requires a longer explanation or definition, so be it. The fact, in the end, is not altered.
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Last Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina added himself to the long list of Republicans who have denied the existence of systemic racism in this country. Graham said on "Fox News Sunday" that "our systems are not racist. America's not a racist country."