Well, hmm. I can see what you're saying, just by their sheer mass in the U.S. Euro-Americans' ideas about race are just going to be important. I think the current blockage has something to do with white folks not really understanding class very well, to be white is to be middle class, or, when the poverty is undeniable, to be no class (trash). Liberals (and even the left) swing back and forth between defining the working class as white guys (yes, women are left out) who work in manufacturing and defining it racially, as black and Latino people, which is kind of an overreaction to the people who point out that the working class isn't just white. Those who are doing the defining rarely place themselves in the category of working class, although they'd be hard-pressed to keep a roof over their heads after missing a couple of paychecks. This is the game, to make a bunch of people think they're 'white' who 75 years ago were not considered white (Poles, Italians, Irish, Jews, et al.) and can therefore more easily believe they have more in common with GW Bush than with someone in the same relation to capital (don't have any) but of a different race.
So I suppose the process has been, racism was used 50-75 years ago to, among other things, prevent class solidarity, but in some areas now we have got pretty integrated unions (in some cases the most integrated place in town) but simultaneously working class consciousness has plunged, so that any gains from less racism (due to Civil Rights, Black Power, Latino & other movements) haven't been converted to seeing a deep common interest. So there's a mild sort of do-gooder fellow human feeling but not a deeper feeling of solidarity--my life and future is tied up with your life and future. So benefits from beating back racism haven't been converted to benefits to the class as a whole, which would in turn secure the anti-racism more firmly. Well, that's my stab at it.
Jenny Brown