Free This Noble Land by James A. Michener Page A

correct racial inequalities, there would be serious disturbances.
    One interesting aspect of the Simpson case involves the eventual possibility of General Colin Powell for the presidency; until Johnnie Cochran and O.J. exploded in their faces, an encouraging number of Americans,
white
Americans, indicated they were prepared to accept an African American president or vice president. Now how will they react? Even though Powell has indicated he is not yet ready for a national campaign, will voters in the future intensify their support for him on the grounds he might prove a healing agent, or will they have serious second thoughts about raising any black into a national symbol and shy away from Powell?
    That Colin Powell appears to have retired from the 1996 campaign is the nation’s loss. (As of June 1996, Dole reportedly was still courting Powell for the Republican ticket.) A team of Bob Dole and Colin Powell might prove unbeatable, and Powell could run as president in 2000. If sometime in the future Powell does become president, he might go far in healing the breach between the white and the black races.
    America’s looming racial crisis, intensified by the Simpson trial and verdict, leads us to the crucial, inescapable question regarding race in the United States: ‘Have relationships deteriorated so badly that interracial conflict has become inevitable?’ I believethe answer is Yes. All signs point to an oncoming clash, and I estimate that it will occur in the early years of the next century. I assess the inevitability this way: First, I can see no likelihood that white society will modify its economic practices so as to provide employment for black males in the inner cities. They will remain an unintegrated mass and a source of deep troubles and dislocations. Second, our national leaders not only appear unable to devise a system that is not anathema to the taxpaying citizenry for giving spending power to our lower-level citizens, but they are also indicating that our government is actually going to back-track on our already insufficient previous efforts. Third, current proposals intended to diminish the number of illegitimate births, particularly among black teenagers, are laudable insofar as taxpayers are concerned, but will be ineffective among the blacks and whites on welfare. The proposals I’ve seen penalize the children, and fail to educate their bewildered parents. Fourth, improbable as this may sound, there may be an inherited hatred between blacks and whites, simmering far back into the days of slavery, and if this is true, it militates against any efforts to eradicate it now.
    I am convinced that the ugly gap between white and black cannot be easily bridged. I expect the animosities to intensify into social, political and particularly economic rebellion as blacks experience the hopelessness in the inner cities, areas that will grow in size and in their ghetto quality. I think there will one day be irredentist movements in which black communities will want to govern themselves, and I suspect that vigorous protest of some kind will erupt, as it has in so many societies in the past when attempts were made to keep an underprivileged class perpetually downtrodden.
    And now, when the political trend of our national life is already skewed against our African American citizens, various governmentagencies are beginning to reverse gains the blacks have painfully achieved in recent years. The Supreme Court, which no longer contains an African American justice philosophically disposed to defend their rights, hands down one verdict after another clearly signaling that the days of progress toward equal justice are past. Governor Pete Wilson in California focused his run for the presidency with a powerful assault on affirmative action, and the vaunted contracts of the Republican victors in the 1994 elections brought only bad news to blacks. Every cheap politician is able to gain points by shouting that talented white men in