I study the ways in which societal structures and political norms have an inertia that continues racial oppression. For instance, I show that a new form of white nationalism that seeks to recruit mainstream citizens to achieve its goals is permeating. This New White Nationalism sees higher education, which imparts fact-based knowledge and interrogates history, social structures, and power, often from antiracist and multicultural lenses, as a threat. I reveal the tactics of The New White Nationalism and provides a tool called The Nostalgia Spectrum to examine American racism. In the process, the author demonstrates that what many scholars are calling a crisis in higher education is really a crisis of political and social imagination. Reimagining a socially just nation and leveraging higher education institutions that provide low-cost, accessible education to minorities as the first choice for middle class America could have transformative effects on the nation itself.