And, amid change, there is continuity. After a seemingly catalytic moment when it appears that, finally,
genuine change is near, nothing happens. No country has been tormented by the race issue like the USA.
Even in the petrified years of apartheid, the diplomatically isolated south africa did not suffer the
internal anguish of America. After all, South Africa was sustained by the belief, however perverse, that its
policy of racial segregation was ‘‘right.’’ ‘‘The American dilemma,’’ as it was called, was actually more
of a paradox. In the land of the free, where unbounded opportunity beckoned, a significant portion of the
population remained locked in a seemingly permanent underclass.