" The civil rights movement, legislation, and milestone court decisions of the 1950s and ’60s produced remarkable changes and ended or ramped down centuries of explicit, statutory discrimination. But real integration was not one of the accomplishments.
The civil rights movement ended in a kind of negotiated compromise. Black Americans were granted legal equality, while white America was allowed to nurture and maintain an illusion of innocence, even as it continued to live in almost complete separation.
Black America always saw the continuing schism. But white America has traditionally been free to ignore and be untroubled by it and to believe it had reached the “postracial” stage of its otherwise proud history. That was until cellphones and the Internet came along. "

― Matt Taibbi , I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street