by Orlando Patterson

About the author: Orlando Patterson is a sociology professor at Harvard University and the author of Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries.

One can quibble with W.E.B. Du Bois’s famous prediction for the twentieth century. [It was] not simply the century of the color line but a century of Jim Crow and myriad other persecutions—many within color boundaries. But, if Du Bois’s epigraph was only half right, his modern-day disciples, who insist the color line will define the next 100 years as well, are altogether wrong. The racial divide that has plagued America since its founding is fading fast—made obsolete by migratory, sociological, and biotechnological developments that are already under way. By the middle of the twenty-first century, America will have problems...