Sowell On Racism In America: We Screwed Ourselves

Even Thomas Sowell can't cut through where this started:

There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done will be transient or irreparable.

I'll let the grand old man ask somebody else for a change:

Just 29 percent of Americans as a whole think race relations are getting better, while 32 percent think race relations are getting worse. The difference is too close to call, but the fact that it is so close is itself painful — and perhaps a warning sign for where we are heading. 

Is this what so many Americans, both black and white, struggled for over the decades and generations? To try to put the curse of racism behind us — only to reach a point where retrogression in race relations now seems at least equally likely as progress? 

What went wrong?

He knows - he answers his own question:

We the voters are not blameless. Having chosen an untested man to be president, on the basis of rhetoric, style, and symbolism, we have ourselves to blame,...

Only to leave us with the quote that clarifies it all:

“We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.”
— F. A. Hayek