Moderation and tolerance, not radical action, can cure today’s racial divide

Apropos of all the race-infused obsessions in today’s culture, please allow some old-style common sense and decency.

The word “racism” in itself has nothing to do with “power,” although racists with power obviously can do more damage than racists without it. The word itself has a simple meaning: the attitude of making assumptions about any individual or group because of the subject’s race (or, because “race” is a fluid concept, the subject’s ethnicity). In other words, it is prejudice based on race.