But I suspect that when that time finally arrives of no more racism in most of the U.S. (I may be a pessimist, but I don’t think that will happen for another 15-20 years minimum), many in the disadvataged communities will be shocked to discover that life just got significantly harder along many dimensions.
How did they end up in the disadvantaged communities to begin with…?!
Let's say that by an act of god/aliens/hypnosis we all wake up tomorrow completely without the ability to tell "races" apart.
It's of course an idea too absurd even for really bad sci-fi, but it's happened; it's like our brains knows everything that we knew before, but not even if we wake up in the most traditional indigenous setting, do dna analysis, or measure the lights reflecting off our skin, can our brains put the pieces together.
We've effectively gone completely race-less; and surely the ultimate way of ending racism would be if the concept of races was so beyond just gone that we can't even recreate it?
Weeeeeeell… here's the thing…
Sentencing disparities still mean that if you the night before went to bed as an imprisoned black man you still wake up with an on average up to 20% longer sentence than the white man that had committed the exact same crime. (And those are of course numbers you can look up even from official, and Trump-era, sources.)
That's one example of how the results of racism would still limit access to opportunities for some in an absolutely post-racism society.
Let's take another example:
Two young people with equal opportunities in life are about to leave home to build their lives as independent adults; the only difference between the two is that one has 100 USD, while the other one inherited 100'000 USD.
So while one of the boys can live comfortably for at least three years while getting a career/business started, the other one would be homeless and run out of money for food within a month.
It's very hard to "build a future" when you're struggling for survival; and that carries over. You are less likely to succeed to the same level, so you're less likely to be able to afford to give your child that advantage that you didn't have; which in turn carries over to the generation after them, and so on.
Of course there will always be examples of people going from the worst situations to absolutely winning at life; but for the average person, and when we look at whole groups, the odds tend to catch up with us.
So even in a completely post-race society would the brokeness of earlier generations be felt; and every act of racism against you and the generations before you would still be skewing your odds in this new post-race society.
Same with access to a good higher education. It's an advantage to have two parents that truly understand what you're going through, and can properly support you; making also studying a generational thing. So the odds are skewed a bit more by if your ancestors did or didn't have access to a good education.
…
Assuming no other major changes, so essentially society of today just continues for a couple of hundred years; then if we at the end of that get back our ability to recognise race, then we would be able to see that where people are at in society they will still have been influenced by the racism happening before we went blind to the concept of race. Those skewed odds would have pushed your family tree in one or the other direction.
So just ending racism isn't enough if we're still left with a society where the financial repercussions of racism would still limit people.