Who to blame for the looting of Macy’s? (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)

Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country, as does the belief, so well articulated by Lincoln, that black people are the obstacle to national unity. — Nikole Hannah-Jones, in “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” in her Pulitzer Prize winning introduction to the New York Times “1619 project.”

In other words, racism defines who we are, just as DNA is a unique set of blueprints that will help determine who you’ll be. Racism, she would have us believe, is buried in our very being, replicating itself and passing unchanged from parents to children. The only escape from this permanent state of hatred is, like DNA, a random mutation.

It is the same flawed logic that attributes  the current fiery, angry uprisings to “systemic racism.” There are so many definitions of the term as to make it practically useless. But it basically says that racism is baked into American institutions whose nature is to act in opposition to African Americans and to create a culture of hatred that is difficult it not impossible to unlock.

Such explanations leave little or no room for progress. Or any acknowledgement that American society has moved a great deal from its history of slavery and Jim Crow. On its face, that argument fails: From the obvious abolition of slavery and the elimination by law of de jure segregation and discrimination racism is in our increasingly distant past, unless you want to argue that legal discrimination still exists.

The response is that racism still exists in our hearts, exhibiting itself in an avalanche of micro-aggressions, triggers, unspoken abhorrence and passive aggression. Social science assures us that this is true.

I don’t buy it. Not in my experience, which has spanned decades that included   “colored” water fountains and legal discrimination in education, schools and public accommodations.

Yes, you can accuse me of making broad conclusions from a particular  experience. That would be committing the same logical error of concluding that the murder of George Floyd demonstrates that racism is in our DNA. Yes, you can argue that the murder is just the latest evidence, piled high. But I won’t let you accuse me, my family and friends of secretly harboring support for institutio,nal, systemic or whatever other brand of racism that you’re peddling.

Obviously, much work must be done to eliminate disparities between racial and ethnic groups. Trillions of dollars have been poured into programs over the past decades to accomplish just that. That would never had happened if racism was universally afflicting our DNA

As to the argument that we’ve made little or no progress, I offer the argument of historian Tom Mackaman, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities and Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, In an interview on the World Socialist Web Site he was asked if racism is America’s original sin. He replied: