“FEARLESS” is how Barack Obama now describes his mood. A series of triumphs has suddenly given him a second wind. On June 29th he at last won “fast-track” authority to negotiate foreign-trade deals, paving the way for deeper economic engagement with Asia and Europe. On June 25th the Supreme Court rejected a conservative attempt to disembowel the Affordable Care Act, Mr Obama’s flagship health-care law. A day later the justices declared gay marriage a fundamental right in all 50 states, and the White House spent the next night bathed in rainbow lights (see article).

Mr Obama cannot claim all the credit. The Supreme Court is not part of his administration, though he nominated two of its nine justices. And his free-trade victory owed much to Republicans in Congress, who beat back a revolt by populist Democrats intent on blocking the Democrat in the White House. But a win is a win, and the president now has momentum to deal with another cause close to his heart: racial justice.

After a racist massacre by a white gunman in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Mr Obama has comforted black America as no other president could, notably in his eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, the murdered pastor. And he has been a voice of reason. America, he has reminded people, has come a long way on race; those who think it has not (see article) should listen to blacks who lived through the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. But in Charleston, in the cadences of a preacher, even singing “Amazing Grace”—so unlike the cool, buttoned-up Obama of old—he also noted that striking inequalities remain. He is right. The median white household in 2013 had net assets of $142,000; the median black one had a paltry $11,000. A third of black men have spent time in jail, and panicky shootings of blacks by police have led to rioting in several cities. Black and Hispanic young men are more than six times as likely to be murdered as their white peers. At the age of nine 86% of black boys and 82% of Hispanic boys cannot read proficiently. Studies have found that people with black-sounding names must send 50% more applications to win a job interview.

Blind, but now I see

Mr Obama first soared to fame, more than a decade ago, with a speech decrying those who would divide the country into black and white Americas. He was right to do so, but that is not the end of the matter. It should not be divisive to note that black Americans face unique problems, nor to seek to alleviate them. In general the state should be colour-blind, but the police cannot do their job well unless they make extra efforts to forge links of trust with minority communities, and schools should pay extra attention to groups who flounder.