The problem with that narrative is that, like the is-there-isn’t-there discussion surrounding the Bradley Effect, having made progress in some sense is not a referendum on the State of Racism in America—or, at least, not a very holistic one. Some media watchers feared that if the Bradley Effect turned out to be nonexistent (as it did) in this election, the media would conflate that story (that people are no longer lying to pollsters about whom they are voting for) with the more dubious story that racism no longer plagues the country. That, fortunately, hasn’t yet happened. But conflating Obama’s victory with a similar diagnosis is making the same mistake, and, to boot, not giving readers enough credit for wanting more nuanced reporting.

And finally, while the “schoolchildren and professors, chief executives and bus drivers, black people, white people, and others” cited at the beginning of the article all make appearances and have their say, it’s not clear whether they each asked themselves if racism in America was dead, as the article states. Particularly if the question was first introduced by the reporters themselves, attributing the question to the sources and anecdotally reporting that, as they woke up, they asked themselves “a simple question,” is a patronizing tactic. Not least because the question is anything but simple.

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