McWhorter: Race Relations Have Gotten Less Honest and Progressive Since Summer 2020 8 May 2021 On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Columbia University Professor and author John McWhorter said that back in the mid-2000s, race relations were “a little more honest and a little more progressive” than they are, especially since the summer of 2020. McWhorter said, “I am beginning to think that I miss 2004, 2005. Because race relations were difficult then, but I was already writing about them then, it was at least a little more honest and a little more progressive than what’s happened, especially since last summer, but a lot of it started creeping in around 2014. And yeah, there’s something that’s gone really wrong and I think the catalyst is this weird thing called social media.”