Race Relations in the Twitter Age

Although writing of a particular context (the American South) and at a particular time (early twentieth-century), much of what W.E.B. Dubois wrote is broadly applicable to this moment in American History. The transformation we need in American race relations requires leadership:

"[S]uch transformation calls for singular wisdom and patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy--if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in human history. It will demand broad-minded and upright men, both white and black, and in its final accomplishment, American civilization will triumph."

It's hard to fit these qualities into even 280 characters.