In 1962, James Meredith became the first black student admitted to The University of Mississippi. In a state already prone to racial unrest, Meredith’s admission did not sit well with the white community. Riots erupted that left two dead, and Mississippi once again became the poster state for racial intolerance.

Ole Miss will have come a long way when it hosts the first presidential debate of the year this Friday. That a black candidate can debate a white candidate on the Oxford campus is a sign of just how much things have changed in this country over the last 50 years.

Still, the state of Mississippi is a long way from becoming a bastion of racial unity. Confederate flags are still flown proudly at football games, and songs about Old Dixie are still sung with nostalgia at social events. Symbols of states’ rights for some, these relics of American history represent the perpetuation of racial oppression and injustice for others.

It is a sad fact that racial intolerance continues to exist in the United States. Barack Obama will take the stage this Friday as the first black presidential candidate who stands a chance in the general election, but some people in the crowd and at home will still judge his worth based on the color of his skin.

Obama’s impending appearance at Ole Miss is a sign that progress is being made in this country. But it also a reminder of how much things have stayed the same. Almost 50 years since the height of the Civil Rights movement, we are all still painfully aware of how little we understand each other, and of how difficult it remains to bridge the racial divide.

No one will be pretending on Friday that the appearance of a black man on the stage at Ole Miss means the end of racial intolerance in the United States. It is not the practice of this country to pretend that racism and even racial disharmony do not exist. Instead, Americans take every available opportunity to engage in open conversation about race, and about why we continue to feel the underlying discord that we do.

Friday’s debate is that kind of opportunity. It will be difficult to reconcile the viable presidential candidacy of a black man with the violent history of the venue at which he is speaking, and with the perpetuation of overt and unacknowledged racism at that venue today. Such a paradox will give us the chance to talk about race in the United States, to listen to a diverse set of opinions and hope that something we hear will help us understand why things are the way they are. The experience can be a valuable one: it can teach us that no matter how different our points of view, everything we say and hear can help us clarify and ultimately combat continued racial intolerance in America.