Albert Einstein said, "It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom." I find this to be true as I experience the current election.

Four years ago, I found myself much in this same place-angered and saddened by the rhetoric and hatred associated with the black candidate for President of the United States. After Barack Obama won, pundits declared that we as a nation had evolved, and his election proved that we were now a post-racial country. The past four years and the current election climate tell a different story.

On October 28, the Boston Globe ran an article titled, "Poll finds majority holds racist views." It reported that a majority of Americans have bias towards blacks. This is critical information for those of us who, like VISIONS, work to create equity through multicultural change. According to Jon Krsonick, a Stanford University professor, ''as much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time . . . it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago.'' This sentiment is also apparent with respect to Latino/as.

VISIONS' theory of modern oppression asserts that largely outside of awareness, most of us still harbor negative racial attitudes that impact both behavior and policy, resulting in unequal access. Our theory says that particularly when racism is not blatantly obvious, meaning old-fashioned oppression is less allowable and there seems to be greater equality between whites and blacks (as in the case of having a black president), "old fashioned racist" attitudes and behaviors will increase. The current example of voter suppression is reminiscent of what my parents had to deal with in Jim Crow and thought was erased with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As noted in the Boston Globe article, when there is racial progress, there is also racial backlash.

The use of "code words", which mean racism without saying it, has labeled Obama as a foreign-born "other", "lazy", and the "welfare president". This comes out of the same deep-rooted faults that have cracked the structure of our society since the U.S.'s inception.

We really want to think these issues are resolved and that the incidences of oppression that occur are isolated events by a few misguided, racist individuals rather than symptoms of a faulty system. As Reverend Sloan Coffin once said, "It is easier to decry evil, than to be called to actually do good." Thus, the unfinished work needed to change structural racial and class inequities is very difficult for citizens in the U.S. to own and address. Yet the U.S. continues to have an unfinished agenda around equity that remains in contradiction with our cultural value of fairness. Until we resolve this, racism--and the fears that undergird it--will be an uneasy part of what it means to be a U.S. citizen.

So what can we do? Modern racism or unconscious bias changes at the personal level with repeated corrective experience over time. When people choose to make sustained and meaningful contact (rather than modern racism's "avoidance of contact"), ideas and opinions have room to shift. Cabinet members who have worked closely with President Obama clearly see the content of his character, his intelligence, and his commitment to the ideals of "America."  

At the institutional level, change involves the sharing of power. This leads to comfort and skill in uncovering and changing structural inequities and a critical letting go of the need to "get beyond" any conversation about race or difference. I have a 20-year long friendship with a white Republican corporate executive in which talking about such differences is as natural as talking about the weather. She and I know that addressing these issues requires this. We have also found it to be exciting, inspiring and fun!

Perhaps, when we as U.S. citizens are ready to genuinely resolve our racial dilemma or when we are forced to, if tensions continue to erode our health and safety, we will dig in and engage personally, systemically, and culturally for as long as it takes. Can you even imagine a massive peace and justice curriculum and training program run out of the Department of Justice that provided leadership in our country's undoing of our historical legacy?