The rest of America may have decided that the discriminatory deprivations of institutional racism are no big deal, but the daily indignities many African Americans experience have now produced a quiet rage. PNS commentator Linn Washington Jr. is a journalism professor at Temple University who writes frequently on race related issues. This is the third in s series of articles on post affirmative action America. Next in the series: perspectives by Michael Datcher, Helen Zia, Andrew Lam, Franz Schurmann and Joan Walsh. If you want us to resend either of the first two of the series (by Richard Rodriguez and Caille Millner), please call George Gundrey at 415-243-4364.

PHILADELPHIA -- Fannie Lou Hamer said it best -- "Sick and tired of being sick and tired."

The legendary civil rights activist made that simple, eloquent statement thirty years ago, but it still captures the feelings deep within the soul of a great many African Americans.

White people don't get it. "Tired of what?" they ask, blithely downplaying the discriminatory deprivations of institutional racism as no big deal. From Hamer to Louis Farrakhan, those of us who rail against being sick and tired are dismissed as advocates of an irrational anger, our pleas for change unworthy of consideration.

Yet the indignities persist. And, because they are ignored by the broader culture, they ultimately turn into a quiet rage. I sense this rage daily in myself -- when I am consistently asked to produce more identification at the bank to cash a check than non-black customers -- and in those I interview as a journalist.

I sensed it this summer, talking with black female employees of the Pennsylvania State Police who are preparing to file a lawsuit against that agency for a long list of blatantly discriminatory procedures.

More recently, I sensed it while interviewing black automobile dealers about the fact that the country's largest newspaper chain, Gannett, is refusing to distribute an article detailing discriminatory practices within the General Motors Minority Dealers Development Program. The article, written by a black Gannett reporter who exposed racist practices at Texaco last fall, was published in a suburban Gannett paper outside New York City. Gannett officials say they are not sending it out because it is "poorly written."

And I could sense it beneath the spiritually elevating networking of the recent Million Woman March and the Million Man March of 1995. Scores of speakers at both marches spoke of such matters as corporate racism and discrimination in the justice system -- but their criticisms were lost in media coverage demonizing MMM originator Farrakhan and focusing on disagreements among MWM organizers.

Many people say that whites do not understand the depths of this quiet rage, or the daily indignities that drive it.

I am willing to believe that ignorance makes a mighty contribution to the dynamic of racism. I also believe there is a broad understanding about the realities of racism in white America.

If racism is no longer such a major problem, why are so many whites resolute in their refusal to exchange places with blacks?

This quiet rage will not trigger a nationwide riot tomorrow. But I wonder how long blacks will continue waiting for corrective action that is constantly promised but never fully delivered.