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behavior became the reason why blacks and whites live in separate
worlds. Racism retreated and pathology advanced, and the burden
of racial problem solving shifted from the creators of racism to
its victims.

The color-blind society that was the '60s ideal became
today's imagined reality. The failure of the lesser breeds to
enjoy its fruits became their fault alone. Thus pressure for
additional, stronger civil rights laws became special pleading.
America's most privileged population, white men, suddenly became
a victim class. Aggressive blacks and pushy women were
reponsible for the Democrats' defeats.

All this occurred despite almost daily incidents of racial
attack, and a series of public opinion surveys which demonstrate
most white Americans believe racial minorities are less than
equal human beings, lacking in thrift, morality, industriousness
and patriotism. (1) In the opinion of our fellow citizens, Wille
Horton and Bill Cosby were the same man, equally undesirable as
neighbor, schoolmate, co-worker, or defender of our common soil.

Ronald Reagan had never seen a civil rights law he liked;
his appointees to the federal courts and the Department of
Justice were determined to destroy or disobey every civil rights
law they read. They made dangerous, precipitous and radical
shifts toward contravening the Constitution and the law of the land.

The ultimate result of such policy was contempt for the rule

1. Smith, "Ethnic Images", National Opinion Research Center,
University of Chicago, GSS Topical Report No. 19, Dec. 1991.