I just got done reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's. latest book and liked
this
essay on racism and censorship in the US:

"The title of my speech," I told the Class of 1990 [at the University
of
Rhode Island], "is 'Do Not Be Cynical About the American Experiment,
Since
It Has Only Now Begun'.

I said that I was often asked to speak about censorship, since my book
Slaughterhouse_Five was so often tossed out of school libraries.
(This is
because it is on a list of supposedly dangerous books which has been
circulating since 1972 or so.  Now new books are ever added.)  "I have
received letters from readers in the Soviet Unction," I said, "who
were told
years ago that my books were being burned up over here."  (That
happened
only in Drake, North Dakota.)  "I replied to them that censorship is
mostly
a rural problem," I went on.  "The same communities used to burn
people when
I was a boy.  I feel that we are finally getting somewhere.

"It was mostly black people who were being burned.  The most
extraordinary
change in this country since I was a boy is the decline in racism.
Believe
me, it could very easily be brought back to full strength again by
demagogues.  As of this very moment anyway we are fairly good at
judging
people for what they are rather than for how closely they resemble
ourselves
and our relatives.  We are in fact better at doing that than any other
country.  In most other countries people wouldn't even consider doing
that.

"Who brought about this admirable change in our attitudes?  The
oppressed
and denigrated minorities themselves, with guts and great dignity
which they
coupled with the promises of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

"Is censorship on the rise?  You would certainly think so, since it
has been
in the news so much.  But I believe it to be a disease which has been
around
for a long, long time, like Alzheimer's disease, but which has only
recently
been identified as a disease and treated.  What is new isn't
censorship but
the fact that it is now recognized as being sickening to our
pluralistic
democracy, and a lot of good people are trying to do something about
it.

"The United States of America had human slavery for almost one hundred
years
before that custom was recognized as a social disease and people began
to
fight it.  Imagine that.  Wasn't that a match for Auschwitz?  What a
beacon
of liberty we were to the rest of the world when it was perfectly
acceptable
to won other human beings and treat them as we treated cattle.  Who
told you
we were a beacon of liberty from the very beginning?  Why would they
lie
like that?

"Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, and not many people found that odd.
It was
as though he had an infected growth on the end of his nose the size of
a
walnut, and everybody thought that was perfectly OK.  I mentioned this
one
time at the University of Virginia, of which Jefferson was not only
the
founder but the sublime architect.  A history professor explained to
me
afterward that Jefferson could not free his laves until he and they
were
very old, because they were mortgaged and he was broke.

"Imagine that!  It used to be legal in the beacon of liberty to hock
human
beings, maybe even a baby.  What a shame that when you find yourself
short
of cash nowadays you can't take the cleaning lady down to the pawnshop
anymore along with your saxophone.

"Now then:  Boston and Philadelphia both claim to be the cradle of
liberty.
Which city is correct?  Neither one.  Liberty is only now being born
in the
United States.  It wasn't born in 1776.  Slavery was legal.  Even
white
women were powerless, essentially the property of their father or
husband or
closest male relative, or maybe a judge or lawyer.  Liberty was only
conceived in Boston or Philadelphia.  Boston or Philadelphia was the
motel
of liberty, so to speak.

"Now then:  The gestation period for a 'possum is twelve days.  The
gestation period for an Indian elephant is twenty-two months.  The
gestation
period for American liberty, friends and neighbors, turns out to be
two
hundred years and more!

"Only in my own lifetime has there been serious talk of giving women
and
racial minorities anything like economic, legal, and social equality.
Let
liberty be born at last, and let its lusty birth cries be heard in
Kingston
and in every other city and town and village and hamlet in this vast
and
wealthy nation, not in Jefferson's time but in the time of the
youngest
people here this afternoon.  Somewhere I heard a baby cry.  It should
cry
for joy."