> If what you say is so, then we really can't expect
> young whites who vore for Obama to be charging forward
> to eliminate the social structures that generate
> racist outcomes.
But can we expect young whites voting for Obama to reinforce those social structures? I don't see how that's likely. So, as my grandmother would put it: "If it sticks, good. If it doesn't, it was unstuck anyways."
My old Cuban teacher, Benito Mata, used to say that Anton Makarenko translated Marx's historical materialism and Lenin's political theory into pedagogy.
And one of Makarenko's pedagogic principles was that, at first, children alter their behavior in order *to look as if* they are honest or loyal or care about others or care about the formal aspects of their education, but that by so doing, by repeating this behavior over and over, they eventually *become* honest and loyal and educated and care about others. That's called learning. People start with superficially-motivated, tiny behavioral alterations. If sustained, those behavioral changes reinforce one another. Thus, those little changes may wind up as robust traits of character.
Superficial changes in people's social conduct are not to be dismissed, but reinforced. Or, as we used to say in the old times, there's an interplay between appearance to essence. It's not only from essence to appearance, but also from appearance to essence.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/makarenko/index.html