Misplaced Optimism

YOU know, in my last post, a review of Kurtis Davidson's novel What the Shadow Told Me, I wrote:

The cultural identity of blacks in America, to which [Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man] helped give shape, is in Davidson's novel being examined from another side, a point in time when, half a century on, the extant racial divides in the United States slowly, finally appear to be crumbling.

Then, not more than 48 hours later, I read about swastikas appearing on the sign at David Scott's (D-GA) office, and the racial tensions that Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs exacerbate to feed their viewers' maniacal outrage, and firsthand accounts of town hall meetings like this one (with particular emphasis on the passage about Rev. Dixon), and I fear that even cautious optimism has been misplaced.