For too long the depth of racism in American life has been underestimated. The surgery to extract it is necessarily complex and detailed.

Since the institution of slavery was so important to the economic development of America, it had a profound impact in shaping the social-political-legal structure of the nation. Land and slaves were the chief forms of private property, property was wealth and the voice of wealth made the law and determined politics.

The larger society was willing to let the frustrations born of racism's violence become internalized and consume its victims. America's horror was only expressed when the aggression turned outward, when the ghetto and its controls could no longer contain its destructiveness. In many a week as many Negro youngsters were killed in gang fights as were killed in the riots. Yet there was no citywide expression of horror.

Through two centuries a continuous indoctrination of Americans has separated people according to mythically superior and inferior qualities while a democratic spirit of equality was evoked as the national ideal. These concepts of racism, and this schizophrenic duality of conduct, remain deeply rooted in American thought today.

With all of her dazzling achievements and stupendous material strides, America has maintained its strange ambivalence on the question of racial justice.

The American people are infected with racism-that is the peril. Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals-that is the hope.