Firing Don Imus was the easy thing. It was the right thing as well, but such a logical conclusion to the melodrama surrounding the shock jock’s racial epithet that there should have been no debate about whether the networks would keep him on.

The only danger in that is fear that such an obvious slur and stereotype may become the new line many Americans metaphorically draw on bigotry and bias. In reality, what Imus said about the mostly black Rutgers University women’s basketball team was so far over the line that it isn’t even part of the distant horizon.

Although an embarrassing chapter in U.S. history 144 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Imus’ behavior may have had one redeeming element. He gave all of us – business leaders, politicians, judges and lawyers, citizens of all stripes – a good reason to revisit the conversation and reaffirm our commitment to equality and justice for all.

We know racism not only exists but is thriving today. The overtly racist acts of the past have mutated into a stealth form that shows up subtly today, such as when real estate agents steer whites away from integrated neighborhoods and blacks toward predominantly black neighborhoods, a pattern discovered by a recent National Fair Housing Alliance undercover investigation. It’s in a culture that devalues itself in musical lyrics or other artistic expressions. It’s in police profiling. It’s institutionalized and it’s systemic and it’s not as easy to spot as the “coloreds only” water fountains of a half-century ago.

Because there’s furtiveness inherent in the racism that is practiced today, eliminating racial barriers will be difficult.

We should thank Don Imus. It isn’t that he was funny or unfairly targeted or anything but the anti-hero in all of this. He simply reminded us – and the millions of Americans who weren’t offended by what Imus said reinforced it – that the fight for racial equality has never been more urgent than it is today.

Let it begin here.