Suddenly, we are being dragged back to the 1980s-a time when race was front and center as the great American divide, a time of anger and backlash and showboating. We are dragged there by the Trayvon Martin verdict, by the Supreme Court's decision to void a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and even by the slow dissolution of immigration reform in the House of Representatives. There is an easy slippage into antique caricatures: A1 Sharpton is back; Rachel Jeantel, Martin's unfortunate phone pal, surfaces to stoke every white racist's fantasy about the limitations of black people; and six jurors find it all too easy to believe that a vigilante who had stalked an innocent black teenager was acting in self-defense when, during a scuffle, he shot the kid point-blank.
展开▼
