Sometimes, monumental moments are hard to spot. Take comedian Michael Richards' racist rant at a West Hollywood nightclub. I viewed the Internet clip after Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, an African-American, used it as evidence that racism is alive and well in America.

Richards' outburst is ugly, really ugly. His liberal, hateful use of the n-word is actually one of the least shameful elements of his mental meltdown. More disturbing were his references to lynching and inherent ethnic superiority.

And so, "Don't tell me that racism is dead," Robinson huffed in his column. "It just shuns the light of day."

Not so. In this minority's opinion, institutional racism is indeed dead in the United States.

That doesn't mean a racist won't cross your path every now and then, including racists who are minorities themselves. But to cite Richards as proof of racism in America is flat-out wrong. His problems are personal, not societal. Just look at the video.

As bad as his spewing was, Richards didn't commit the act of "intolerance" that mattered that night. That honor belonged to the audience. It didn't tolerate Richards' racial tirade one bit.

Audience members did the right thing. After overcoming an initial sense of disbelief at what they were hearing, their disgust was apparent as they began to leave the club. Richards' words exiled him. In a room full of everyday people, he was the minority thinker.

That monumental moment seems to have been lost in the aftermath.

Now Richards is appearing on every stage that will have him, so he can ask for forgiveness. I won't second-guess his sincerity. But the apology tour is also a desperate attempt to make sure a three-minute outburst doesn't destroy a 26-year career. Seems there's not much of a mainstream market for racist comics these days.

However, there's still a market for racism-rhetoric peddlers such as Robinson and civil rights warhorses Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. If racism were as prevalent as they would have us believe, Robinson would not be a columnist at one of the nation's finest newspapers, Jackson's son would not be a seven-term congressman and Sharpton wouldn't have "former Democratic presidential-primary candidate" on his considerable resume.

Yet it is these men who chose to exploit the outburst for their own advantage instead of recognizing, building upon and celebrating the crowd's rejection of Richards' words.

It's the critics' right to drone on, but they're fighting the wrong battle. Disparity, not racism, is now the top problem for minorities. They are no longer one and the same. A generation of affirmative action, diversity and other racial preference programs in academia, business and government has narrowed gaps in education, wealth and officeholding. But it hasn't come close to ending them.

Now comes the hard part. We need new strategies to eliminate the achievement gap, even if it means challenging the traditional victimization mind-set that's the intellectual foundation of past remedies.

For example, we need a serious second look at racial integration. There's no doubt that forced racial segregation is wrong. But is integration for its own sake necessarily desirable when it comes to education?

This was a significant point in the Forsyth County NAACP's opposition to that county's $250 million school bond proposal (which was approved by voters earlier this month). Prior to the vote, chapter president Stephen Hairston told me that investments in poor, minority and underutilized schools should have precedence over building new suburban schools for primarily white kids.

Why? Because once those suburban schools are built, it will be the poor kids who'll be bused for diversity purposes, not the other way around. Hairston believes time spent on a bus is better invested in a classroom, even if the classmates are all minorities.

This is the type of bold thinking required for the new civil rights era. Intellectual effort shouldn't be wasted on Michael Richards.

Correction: In last week's column, "With faith and charity, there's hope," I identified Jeffery Skoll as a co-founder of eBay. Nope. Pierre Omidyar is eBay's sole founder; Skoll is "founding president."

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