A few years ago, my wife and I were looking for a new apartment. My wife met with a realtor who had a place that was perfect for us, but wanted to know if I was Arab (I’m not). Turns out the landlord didn’t want to rent to Arabs, who are a growing population in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Because he lived in one of the apartments in the house, this was perfectly legal—but also obviously racist.

On many occasions in New York I have seen cab drivers pass by black men, as Al Rocker recently detailed. Just the other day, while buying a six-pack down the shore I chatted with the clerk about the hapless 76ers. He told me, “They need a white guy, you know, someone with brains.” I cringed and said something like, “I don’t think that’s the problem.”

On social media, conservatives have been quick to quibble with racist Donald Trump supporters, but not quick to address it in our pages. It’s time that we do. The Trump nativists often post horrible anti-Semitic and anti-black cartoons of a kind we thought long gone from discourse. They are not long gone. They are right here with us, and they demand rebuke.

Racism is real. It happens. It’s no good pretending it doesn’t. And it’s no good pretending that police deal with white kids the same way they deal with black kids. Irrational racist bias is still a part of our lives. It’s true that racism has a very different form than it did half a century ago. Our laws have moved towards equality, even to inequality to address historic racism, such as affirmative action. There isn’t much more the state can do to promote racial equality, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing we as Americans can do.