What is perennial, I think, is not just racism but misogyny, xenophobia, and every other way the powerful protect their privilege from those who might consider asking for a place at the table and a sliver of the pie.

Of course it's learned. And of course it will be protected, just because it's what so many people see as normal, and they fear any kind of change.

Change will be slow to come, but I am cautiously hopeful, given how the staggering ineptitude of the caricature of a human being in the White House continues to parade his cluelessness and his disdain for everything our country ever stood for, greed excepted.