Recommended read from Salon.com: White panic, white denial: The racial prehistory of the McKinney pool party that white America can't let go

"It is whites far more than blacks who cannot break free of the poisonous attitudes of the past, and facing that truth can help us understand the peculiar state of American race relations in the 21st century, so painfully distilled in that video clip of a white police officer and a bikini-clad African-American teenager."