Ta-Nehisi Coates can leave you disappointed. He's a bit of a Neo-Platonist where the qualities of the United States we live in are a reflection of the perfect and immutable Form of the United States. And where one of the immutable qualities of that form is White Supremecy. For example, on the subject of class based solutions to poverty designed to be "universally" helpful to poor people both black and white:
At every step, “universalist” social programs have been hampered by the idea of becoming, and remaining, forever white. So it was with the New Deal. So it is with Obamacare. So it would be with President Sanders. That is not because the white working class labors under mass hypnosis. It is because whiteness confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of class—much like “manhood” confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of race. White supremacy is neither a trick, nor a device, but one of the most powerful shared interests in American history.
But we don't, as a Nation have an immutable essential nature. Certain facts on the ground will make white supremacy untenable. Here's Ron Brownstein:
Over time, the nation faces the same equation. As in Texas, demographers forecast that workers of color will provide all of the national work-force growth in the coming decades. And as the demographer William Frey has projected, if college-completion rates don’t rise for African Americans and Hispanics, the share of all adults with a college degree will start shrinking by 2020.
As this election season demonstrates, it's gonna be ugly sometimes as we get from here to there, but at some point the numbers change the game. Once it becomes inescapable that "Americans" equals "black, brown, and white", then the zero sum battles will end and white Americans will say,
"If we're on the same team, I'm not happy being on a team that loses."