It was naïve to imagine the United States would elect its first African American president and move instantly into an enlightened, post-racial era. It was naïve, or perhaps unduly hopeful. This sentiment was strong among the college-age youth I interviewed while reporting for MTV’s Street Team in Oregon, in March of last year. “He’s gonna save America,” one young man said of then-candidate Barack Obama, his eyes ablaze and earnest. He spoke of more than simply escaping the long, dark years under George W. Bush. He was talking of stepping into a new day in the United States, where all people are valued for their character and not their skin hue.

Young or not, the student I interviewed gave voice to a shape of thought many Americans share on some level: that this man can save us. That a figure can step onto the world stage and usher us into an incredible new day we want so very much to live in.

But no single person can save us from this task. Even if Obama’s very election seems iconic of progress the nation has needed to address since its spectacularly brutal beginnings. This task of becoming a society free of racism is in everyone’s hands, but perhaps falls most heavily upon those who benefit from the standing iniquities. And that makes, at times, for an uneasy task.

There is that dreaded word: racism. Now that the topic of race has been forced into the punditocracy—which is, needless to say, overwhelmingly white—the task of discussing what is Racist and what is Not Racist has fallen onto the to-do lists of those who detest such discussions. The motives for this aversion are rather uncomplicated, and their distribution echoes the divide that separates which families regularly mention ethnicity in their discussions, and which families never talk about race.

And yet, when racism is discussed by these pundits, it seems they believe that naming racists is all that is required to move us forward. Just as some hope that an iconic shift in the culture is enough to address institutionalized imbalances in the system, others talk of racism as if rooting it out requires peering into the inner workings of a person’s “heart.” Others act as if joining together to ostracize the most egregious examples of public racism will purge our social body of this ill.

It will not.

We enter a challenging chapter of the American Story. Our most cherished narratives speak of the ambition and hard work and ingenuity that must fuel the Dream. These same qualities are required here.  Not to point at obvious bigots, but rather to honestly examine the system from which we draw our own profits. Because racism is not just about a nasty word, or even about the attitudes about other people we absorb as we move through the constant retelling of the national self-justifying stories of “success.”

Racism is about living on someone else’s back because you believe that they deserve to be bent over while you ride high in the breeze—and for no more reason than that they seem different. Racism is about a system of oppression disguised and sold as  meritocracy. Racism is an engine that purrs like a well-oiled murder machine, one constantly serviced by both the most powerful and the most ignorant. Dismantling this malevolent machine requires many joyful and fierce mechanics willing to stand up and walk on their own. But first, they’ll have to take a wrench to the very mechanism that has long made the ride so smooth for some.

And before we get home, we’ve a long walk uphill.

This article was produced as part of Commonweal Institute's Progressive Op-Ed Program