When I first moved to Austin from environs significantly north and east of here, back in the 80s, I read an article in the Statesman sports section about some track guy, I forget his name, who was considered the 'last great white runner.' I was nonplussed; really didn't know what to make of it. It kept on in the same vein, talking about how there were no great white runners since this guy, etc., and comparing him to contemporary track athletes, who happened to be not white. After I finally figured out that, yes, the writer really was drawing a distinction among track athletes based on race, and yes, he was lamenting the fact that blacks had taken over the sport, and yes, the daily paper of the capital city and home of the University of Texas really printed that shit without taking out the in-your-face racism, I had a greater understanding of the place I'd come to. It really brought home to me the casual, pervasive racism that still existed. This was about the same time I saw the signs in some small towns nearby, that they had not gotten around to taking down, designating certain water fountains for whites only. In the 80s.
Now I'm sure some of y'all will get your backs up that I'm saying Texas is more racist than the northeast, and you should see the racism up there, it's turrible and all. And yeah, that's part of what I'm saying; it was open, casual racism at the biggest paper in the most enlightened city in Texas. I am 100 percent convinced that a similar piece would never have appeared in any major paper in the northeast, and any writer who submitted such a piece would find himself out of a job within the next hour. You may still be right about the racism in parts of the northeast; it certainly exists, but it's more hidden. In a town near where I grew up there was an annual tradition of some joker burning a cross on a hill overlooking the town; I'm sure a number of people must have known who was behind it, but they kept their mouths shut. Which is worse, the sub-rosa racism or the open racism? I've heard arguments for both sides.