This is especially true with African-Americans, given that there's centuries of spectral noise claiming our hidebound inferiority. But what I've learned from my present study is that, at any moment in American history you can find smart, honest people lamenting the hopelessness of some social ill. I think back to Abraham Lincoln, who early in his political career thought that white animosity was so intractable that blacks would have to shipped back to Africa. 

Lincoln was wrong, but he was neither crazy nor singular. It should be oft-noted that we've done a mediocre job of desegregating the country. But it should also be occasionally noted that 

if Abraham Lincoln could see America today, his eyes would pop out of his head.