ABSTRACT
How far has America come on the issue of race? November 4, 2008. The first black man is elected president of the United States, and journalists like Richard Cohen (2008) of The Washington Post conclude that the country has transcended race. Yet in many ways, racism continues to color the Obama years as much now as in the past. One might say his election has been a cover to proceed with an established system of state-sponsored looting and pillorying in black communities (Bonilla-Silva [2003] 2014). Whereas some consider America’s racist institutions like those during Jim Crow as temporary aberrations to an otherwise well-functioning, morally compliant system, a counterview sees them as enduring features of democratic capitalism (Feagin 2006). Though Jim Crow no longer exists (at least formally), its ghost lies on, unwilling to die.
