I have serious doubts if a real discussion can be held. Todays society values the right to say what they want to say regardless of who they offend over being PC enough to find out the other sides view by asking polite questions. Most people feel that they have already made up their mind as to how "those people" are and nothing they hear will change that. In fact they violently oppose new information or exposure of known information as incorrect in order to hold onto their beliefs. Your post only pisses off people that dont have the humility or internal fortitude to admit when they are wrong.
Well, Asclepias, if it were easy, we'd have had that discussion a long, long time ago...but we haven't, so here we are. Against us is layer upon layer of mistrust, of ignorance, of violence and retribution; of so much that is the worst in any of us. Of all that though, it's the ignorance, and the fear born of it, that contributes most to keeping matters as they are. It's ignorance, that lets us see another person as a color, not an individual man or woman; that tells us it's ok to assume how another feels, rather than ask; that lets us think it's OK to slight others because "they hate me anyway, so they don't matter." It seems incomprehensible to those of us who have lived where we were more or less forced to interact with those on the other side of the black-white divide, but I'd bet there's a surprisingly high percentage of both blacks and whites who have never had a friend of "the other race"(and I wonder how many of those wouldn't even want to). It's a whole lot easier to dislike, stereotype, generalize and dehumanize someone we don't really know as an individual, than someone we do.
On top of that, there's an issue of socioeconomic class embedded in all this that is every bit as much an issue as skin color, if not more so. Aside from the resentment that can engender, there's the idea that economic (and social) advancement is a zero-sum game, in which one person's advancement can only come at someone else's expense. Whether that last is really true, most people seem to believe it is, and if most of us aren't very good with humility, or admitting we might have been wrong, we're even worse at self-sacrifice for someone else (especially someone else we don't even really know, and maybe even have a hard time identifying with).
So, I suppose there's an awful lot of grounds for thinking this is hopeless, but I've seen us get past even worse. I grew up in the segregated South, and I've seen attitudes change within my own lifetime. Is it perfect? Of course not, not even close, but I can tell you there's a level of acceptance unthinkable forty or fifty years ago. Most of it has happened one heart and mind at a time, and it has happened, in spite of those on both sides who didn't want it to, because most people most of the time really are basically decent, when they let themselves be, and really don't want to hurt someone else, so long as they aren't hurt in the process. That part gives me hope that one day, we'll eventually figure out that "being like me" doesn't necessarily mean "looking like me". I won't live to see it, but some of the younger folks might.