I don't agree, and it's not "comforting", mostly because the majority of people are unwilling to truly examine it. To do so would require the kind of social upheaval that this country hasn't seen since the last Civil War. I'm not talking about idle rich people, I'm talking about the ultra rich who are literally sucking the life blood out of this country with no fiduciary responsibility to its people. It really doesn't matter what the common people do among themselves. We could have 10 revolutions in social thinking among common folk, but it would have no impact on our social mobility so long as wealth sequestration is happening.
By the brass ring, I'm assuming you mean equal opportunity for self-improvement. Do you think improving race relations will really level out the playing field when animosities between people are largely class-driven, with racial subsets? Right now everyone does have equal opportunity: to become hundreds of thousands in debt to get an education, to pay through the roof for health care, to use crumbling infrastructure, to have their consumer choices monopolized by a few corporations, to have their sources of information dumbed down or manipulated by the same 6 conglomerates, to vote when their vote doesn't really matter anymore because big money controls all parties, etc. How do you plan to fix these HUGE problems by focusing on race relations alone?
I never said anything about leveling out the population. We don't have to do that to bring sanity back to this country. We just need to increase taxes on the ultra wealthy. I'm talking people who own $150 billion and control government, industry, all of it. If we can't reign these people in then we have no future because they will always be a security threat to democracy.
I'm not saying race shouldn't be addressed I'm saying it's not the biggest problem, not by far. People are responsible for being racist but resolving racism won't level the playing field. Hitler never rose to power because of racism, he got there because he gave Germans back their livelihood. The Treaty of Versailles created an artificial class struggle between Germany and the rest of western Europe which was just itching for an opportunist like Hitler to come in and rectify to gain power. And it worked. This is precisely how Donald Trump got elected (although he is not Hitler by any means), he observed an untapped demographic based on class struggle and he became President. If we don't address these economic disparities now, we will get increasingly radical leadership because a bewildered population will be begging for someone to come in and take radical control of the situation. They might even be good at their job, but maybe they will have a dark side like they hate a certain race. We are lucky that Trump was an idiot because if he was actually psycho the situation could have been really bad.
Part of the reason why we are taught to hate socialism is because it will prevent us from looking at something key that Marx said, which is that people's social condition is directly tied to their economic condition. It is true, 100%. It doesn't mean socialism is the answer, but it does mean that pretty much all the ails America is economic in origin, and right now our #1 economic problem is the ultra wealthy. The industry owners. When people can feed themselves and self-actualize, they fight less and talk more. Tighten the purse strings and you get a population that is easier to manipulate because then everyone sinks down to the level of fear. This is a divide and conquer strategy that has been decades in the making.