Many Republicans may not be racists, but they seem to be silent when members of their party come out with openly racists statements or policies. If you aren't a racist, but you're OK letting your police department or other government agency engage in racist actions can an outside observer actually tell that you're not a racist?
I've watched and looked at things for a long time as well, what I can see are centuries of bigotry from mild to extreme that are perpetuated to maintain one dominant culture in this country. An example is changing your name to make it more English looking/sounding. The myth our great grandparents told their children was that the immigration people did it because they couldn't understand the names. The truth is the immigration people had the passenger manifests and knew what the name was, sure some things don't transfer into English orthography, but it was the individual who changed the name to make themselves appear less foreign. That's pretty benign I guess, but it changed lots of European ethic groups into white, English and stripped plenty of people of more unique heritages.
But white folks who could change their names were lucky, it's harder for people who don't look white and English to pass. The problem is that all those white folks seem to have passed on the resentment of having to pass to their kids, but didn't acquire any compassion to temper it.
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