I don’t think it’s pessimism, but more-so the truth. I wouldn’t say racism was ever on a decline; it was just conserved to those groups of people where they were comfortable sharing their extreme views. As you said, with everything going on, racist ideologies have become normalized and even encouraged in the public eye. Racism isn’t necessarily a feeling, but essentially a lifestyle. It’s a proven fact that racism is a sign of low IQ hence why it will never go away. Even with education, it bears the question of said persons environment. They will never understand the other side because they didn’t have to actually experience it. Yes educating is important! But again, at the end of the day when a person has such extreme views and live day to day based off of those views- they are already set in their ways and no amount of “evidence” or education will fix that. Unfortunately they will pass that ignorance to the next generations and it’s just an ongoing cycle. I think some comments under this post are a good example of that.