This should not need to be pointed out, but slavery was a Southern institution. It did not exist everywhere. This means not all whites participated in it. And even in the South, only the 1% owned slaves. The Civil War was fought as a big Fuck You to the North for telling the South how to live.
None of my ancestors participated in slavery. None of them participated in Jim Crow. Our story only starts after the Civil War in any event, and it starts in the North.
By and large, my own forebears all lived in places which were largely white and where they did not interact in any way–positive or negative, as far as I know–with persons of color.
For me to blame all black people for the actions of one black person is execrable, even if I know that if I am going to be robbed at gunpoint, the chances that it will be a black male between the ages of 16 and 45 or so are much larger than that it will fit any other demographic. Especially in the areas where there is a lot of crossover between the ghetto and the rest of the city, that holds true.
Blaming whole communities for the actions of the few is the definition of bigotry. It is morally repugnant to me. But obviously, I am neither blind nor stupid, as many seemingly expect me to be.
Personally, I DO watch certain types of black people more carefully. I watch certain types of WHITE people more carefully too, and certain types of Hispanics, and, to my surprise a few months ago at a local market, Nepalese, many of whom looked like ghetto Pachucos. Nepalese seem to have a certainly cultural affinity for Mexican style, at least around here.
But only academics still engage openly in true racism, which is assuming you know what you need to know about someone a priori because of the accidents of their births, about which they had no control.
Put another way, the only openly racist people still remaining in this country are the people who are accusing everyone else of racism.
Only academics hate entire races because of their skin color. Only academics hate entire genders–to the extent they still believe in gender–because of their chromosomal inheritance. Only academics still hate entire religions.
If we want to rid this country of hate, we need to muzzle or fire the most hateful people among us, which in the main is publicly funded, emotionally callow, intellectually weak members of our universities, and the politicians who march and rhyme to their discordant and ugly tunes.