As with most difficult issues, the answers usually lie between the extremes.
The nation as a whole has made great strides in this area. To deny this is foolishness. Has discrimination been completely erased institutionally, I’m skeptical, but I’m not skeptical that it largely or close to wholly has been. If you are a person of color who wants to succeed today in America, there is little reason why you can’t.
So then why the continuing discrepancy between whites and blacks in poverty, housing, crime, education, etc? Why is there an apparently pervasive sub culture in this community of problems and failure in these areas? This is where the dishonesty is particularly strong. It is dishonest and wrong to blame this completely on residual racism and discrimination while ignoring problematic behavior and cultural problems in that community, as well as the failures and exacerbation of the problems by some of the programs designed by the govt. This is the dishonesty of the left. It is equally dishonest and wrong to say that that there are zero residual effects and impact from over 200 years of slavery and Jim Crow on these behaviors and this culture, that blacks now stand entirely equal and on the same footing as whites not withstanding this horrible history, and that all of these problems are caused by govt programs. That is the dishonesty of the right.
So where does this leave us as a society? Hopefully more willing to engage in more honest discussion. Hopefully, more willing to critically examine our own beliefs on the subject as opposed to our gotcha politics. For example, my personal view is that the bigger issue today is cultural and behavioral within the minority community as opposed to residual racism. However, I’m not going to stick my head in the mud and deny the role that historical racism has played and may still be playing in all of this. The only way to solve the issue is to as truthfully as possible examine the contributing factors and then deal with them.