Oddly enough, it was Bill Clinton who put it very well when he announced for the Presidency in October, 1991:
"'For 12 years, the Republicans have tried to divide us, race against race' Mr. Clinton said. 'Here in the shadow of this great building, all of us, we know all about race-baiting. They've used that old tool on us for decades now. And I want to tell you one thing: I understand that tactic, and I will not let them get away with it in 1992.'"
We have never heard anything like that from the man since then, but it did sound good at the time.
Thus it is The Doctrine of White Supremacy, in place since the time of Slavery, that has been significantly employed by the national ruling class, as it has evolved in this country, in order to maintain and expand its dominance of the political economy. There is continued and unending violence employed against the African-American community, which extends from random and arbitrary police violence against black men to the non-random but equally repressive violence committed by the so-called "criminal justice system" to discrimination in living space, education, employment opportunity, and so on and so forth.
It is in this sense that the Civil War has never ended. That does not mean that there will not be a formal Second Civil War in the future. There will be. But it will simply be the re-ramping up to the broadest and most violent of stages of what the nation has been living with since the first slaves arrived on these shores in 1619.
Post Script: Ms. Swin Cash, a star player for the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association, summed it all up very well:
"The scariest part for me right now is that stories that I used to hear from my grandmother, stuff that happened in the civil rights [movement], how she used to talk about how the world was and things that needed to change. It's like the bogeyman's come back out of the closet and those things that used to be are now being brought to the forefront once again."
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