David Brooks in his December 1, 2014 essay titled Class Prejudice Resurgent
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/david-brooks-class-prejudice-resurgent.html?_r=0)

offers his usual ideologically based, deliberate misreading of race relations in American, of the present, as not based on racial prejudice but as centered on ‘classism’. He elaborates on this point with an illustration from British history, how relevant this historical citation from the history of another nation seems labored, to state the obvious: except for slavery and the decimation of indigenous peoples, America has prided itself as egalitarian in spirit, if not in practice. And do not forget ‘meritocracy’ as a singular American accomplishment, that Mr. Brooks celebrates, he being an example of the rightness of that system.
There is nothing that is more dependable than Conservatism self-willed political myopia, about the question of race, especially since the migration of the Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the mid 1960’s, as stinging rebuke to the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Right Acts. The Party of Lincoln transformed itself almost overnight into the Party that politically enabled Richard Nixon and his Southern Strategy.
There is so much more to say about Mr. Brooks’ essay, which trivializes the idea and practice of a national conversation about race in America, to the much more manageable discussion about class, although Conservatism is always about the care and maintenance of that benighted system. Racism is alive and well in 21st Century America, and the Brooks’ essay is proof of Conservatism’s and Conservatives lack of candor/honesty on this vexing question.
Political Cynic