Interesting post here at Slate's XX Factor. Melinda Henneberger tries to understand why black women and white women struggle to find common ground. The obvious reason, to my mind, is segregation. Black women live around, and in most cases with, other black men or boys. They have fathers (not enough), they have husbands (not enough), and they have sons (maybe too many, hehe). But they don't have these sorts of close relationships with white women, under any circumstances.
The same, I suspect, is true of white women, which is what explains Gloria Stienem and Geraldine Ferarro. I'm just going to guess that neither of them know many black women. I'd bet money that if you ask them to name three different black families they'd sat to dinner with, they'd probably have to reach back a decade for each equation. Without some tangible understanding of each other, it seems to me it's going to hard to find much transracial unity. Until segregation falls, sadly, I think this will always be the case.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I couldn't agree with you more. I moved to a relatively small town near New Orleans about six months ago and I've (needless to say) become very sensitive to the issue of segregation (again). I'm European-American (my euphemism for folks that look "White") and on Thanksgiving day, I actually had to eat two meals at two different houses to properly celebrate the day. I had greens and sweet potato pie with an African-American family first, did a bunch of dishes, and moved on later in the afternoon to a totally different menu with people from work (all "White," of course, except for the one Japanese guy who was invited, I think, largely because he plays jazz guitar VERY well). It was all tasty and even fun. But my heart was sad by the time I went home. It's very schizoid the way many people live in this country.
So, sorry you had to do dishes! Ahh well, they don't call it America's original sin for no reason.