Letters to the Editor
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Less Racist? (Christian Nationalism)
I guess I would hope that the US is becoming less racist, but the problem is complex. First of all, regardless about what the public's attitude toward "interracial couples" is (aren't we all interracial?), there's still no way to galvanize a reactionary popular vote like pointing at urban African Americans. The "let them eat cake" response to Katrina proves that.
Secondly, we may be morphing towards an era when the community bound by racism becomes one bound by a Christian Nationalism (citing Salon's former columnist Michelle Goldberg): in short, a world of mega-churches, implicitly dominated by whites but open to all, who focus their intolerance on those who question:
1) America's supposedly Christian origin.
2) Its supposedly European "majority"
3) The need to protect same from outsiders.
Unfortunately, the know-nothing wing of American democracy has reinvented itself many times over the centuries; there seems no reason to believe it can't again.
This is not to say, however, that Krugman isn't right: it may well be that a pendulum is moving a good direction for now.