Although the Brown vs Board of Education decision made by the US Supreme Court 60 years ago ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the Constitution, a Pew Center report released in May this year showed that about one-in-three black and Hispanic students attend a school where at least three quarters of students were of the same race or ethnicity.

Pew Center research last week showed starkly different views on racial issues from white and black communities, and another Pew survey released in June this year revealed that the American public is evenly divided about whether the "greatest nation on earth" has made the changes needed to give African-Americans equal rights with whites.

Pew Center surveys also find African-Americans a lot more downbeat than whites about the pace of pro-gress toward a colorblind society.

As reflected in the case of Michael Brown, African-Americans are more likely to say that they are treated less fairly than whites by police, the courts, public schools and other key community institutions.

This is in addition to the finding that the economic gulf between African-Americans and whites, such as in household income and household wealth, has either remained largely unchanged or even widened in the last half a century.

The Martin Luther King Memorial along the Tidal Basin in Washington, with its sculpture created by Chinese artist Lei Yixin, has been a popular destination for people to pay tribute to the civil rights hero and reflect on the progress of their society.

It seems that even today, King's dream remains an elusive goal. And Mao's words half a century ago are not totally irrelevant.

The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. E-mail: chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 08/28/2014 page8)