Oh yea?
Very old post & is as true today as it was then.
Actually worse.
Speaking of the perspective of history you were right, I'm more optimistic, I disagree about the ALWAYS part, cultures and people change and evolve over time. The government can help this process along by making sure ALL citizens flourish in the pursuit of happiness, that the job description anyway.
Fear of the "other" will always be with us, but it is tribal, not racial, there is plenty of evidence for this too and examples of mixed race sports teams and armies to prove this as well, all perform equally well. There will be those who have preference based on race, that's just the way some people are put together biologically, they are a small minority though and are included in all all races, they are often xenophobes too.
A hundred and fifty years ago Irish Catholics were thought of as little better than blacks by protestants, who ran society and government at the time. There was ghettoization and widespread discrimination. Even in my home town the Catholics lived in one end of town and the protestants in the other, but that has long since changed as the importance of religion has faded. I was a protestant kid, but almost all my friends were catholic, many of irish or highland scots descent, I went to the public school system and they the parochial one at the time, they have since been integrated. People don't have to look or speak differently for tribalism to emerge, teenage kids will do it over, schools, fashion and phones.