Congratulations, everybody! We’ve finally done it! The white house is white no more. Clean, white hands have opened its glistening white doors to a black man, and shut them promptly behind him. And you, my friend, may have dropped that very black man’s name into a ballot box once or even twice in the last eight years, meaning that all your sins have been forgiven. What is more, all your future sins have been cleansed as well. No matter who you attack and slander or why, it won’t matter, because YOU brought a black man into the white house. And because of that, we can proudly say that racism is over in America.

Say it with joy to the men with police bullets in their black flesh, shot before a white man would have been. Whisper it to the children and wives of those men when they sob and cry. Tell it to Michael Brown when he stands with his hands up, unarmed in Ferguson, twenty feet ahead of the police car and twenty feet ahead of death. Cheer it towards the people arrested protesting in his name, 92% of which have been black in only a 65% black community. Shout it with pride to the two black suspects killed by officers each week in America. What about your neighbor, your friend, your coworker, your employee, your boss? Are they black? Then this week, it could be them. Better let them know that racism is over in America, too.

Why not tell it to the 50% of female blacks, Native Americans, and Latinas that graduate? Let the boys know, too. Their numbers are even lower. And teach it with lessons in the schools where there aren’t enough textbooks to bring home, where the latest encyclopedia dates to 1988, where the bathrooms are as dirty as they are scarce, and where vermin run in the halls like little children late to class. Their majority of students are minority students. They are part of the 38% of black children who live below the poverty line, compared to the 22% of all children in America who do.

What is more, you should spread the news to the 13% of the American population that are African American, 4% that are Asians or Pacific Islanders, 14% that are Latino, and 2% that are Native American, and then inform the respective 2%, 0%, 0%, and 0% of presidents that they have been. It wouldn’t be that hard. You’d only be talking to one guy. And because of that one guy, as you can all see, racism is absolutely over in America. We’ve have collected our lovely 2% to sit for eight years in the white house, which means all of our hard work is over. We don’t have to worry about those tricky-to-solve prejudices anymore.

My great-grandparents were okies. They were the dirt-poor vermin that came from Oklahoma to a Californian promised land. Neither of them wore shoes very often. My granny came over with her family like a regular Ruthie Joad. She picked cotton and lived in government camps. She couldn’t have rubbed two nickels together for the life of her. My great-grandfather hopped on trains because he had no family to come over with. He lived in a house with fifteen other dirty strangers but no running water. My granny was the poorest of the poor, but even she was too good for my papa. But they married and had my grandma, and she married and had my mother, and finally my mother married and had me. I came from the dirtiest and poorest there was. And this very instant I’m sitting in a pretty suburban house in a pretty suburban neighborhood, with my pretty father and prettier mother , plus two pretty siblings and some pretty nice things.  My family advanced because we had the opportunity to, and we had the opportunity because we’re white. Your average black in my granny’s time was just as poor as she was, but the difference was that they were forced to stay that way. And many of those families have. Tell those families that racism is over in America when they can’t climb up like my great-grandparents did. Tell it to their grandkids and great-grandkids today, who are earning , as of 2009, 65% of the average white wage.  Shout it proudly from their crumbling rooftops and let them know as they walk the streets famished, impoverished, mistrusted, threatened, taunted, and scared, that racism is over in America.