I found this comment made by Cornell West, an African American professor at Princeton whom formerly taught at Harvard U., interesting and well explained.
"Professor West attributes most of the black community's problems to "existential angst derived from the lived experience of ontological wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images permeating U.S. society and culture." He explains that "the accumulated effect of the black wounds and scars suffered in a white-dominated society is a deep-seated anger, a boiling sense of rage, and a passionate pessimism regarding America's will to justice." "It goes without saying," he adds, "that a profound hatred of African people sits at the center of (white) American civilization."
In West's view, the September 11, 2001 attacks gave white Americans a glimpse of what it means to be a black person in the United States - feeling "unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hatred" for who they are. "The ugly terrorist attacks on innocent civilians on 9/11," he said, "plunged the whole country into the blues"
I bet he got a standing O for that.