John McWhorter, the linguist and “cranky liberal Democrat” complains in the NY Daily News that prominent African-Americans keep insisting that “Nobody talks about race.” McWhorter says everybody talks about race. Sometimes they even talk about racism, but even that isn’t the point. What African-Americans want is to convince white America that African-Americans are still living with racism every day — and that we need to fix the problem.

McWhorter concludes that the conversation has begun, but the world won’t change overnight: “We are, because of Trayvon’s tragedy, engaged in another chapter in America’s ongoing conversation about race. Some are learning a little, but we’ll have no mysterious revolutions in thought. For all those waiting for a conversion, that’s the bad — but honest — news. We’re stuck with imperfect conversation.”