I assume this question is in recent demands for reparations to the African Americans. I had to debate this topic, so let me present to you some evidence.
First, racism exits today at least in part because of slavery.
University of Rochester discovered in one of their 2013 studies, that
(http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=7202, “Legacy of Slavery Still Fuels Anti-Black Attitudes in the Deep South”)
“[A] team of political scientists found that white Southerners who live today in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy dominated are much more likely to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves.”
Second, this racism exists at a sub-conscious level in all places.
A 2001 study by Poverty Action Lab revealed the following:
“Researchers examined the level of racial discrimination in the United States labor market by randomly assigning identical résumés black-sounding or white-sounding names and observing the impact on requests for interviews from employers. Results found that résumés with white-sounding names received 50 percent more callbacks than those with black names, indicating that, all other things being equal, race is still an important factor in the American labor market.”
Third, this racism contributes to poverty, hunger, crime, and discrimination in the lives of African Americans.
Homelessness: In an article by the Huffington Post, they stated that Black Families are Seven Times More Likely To Be Homeless Than Whites.
Eichler 2012, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/black-families-homeless_n_1324290.html Black Families Seven Times More Likely To Be Homeless Than Whites)
“…black families accounted for just 12.3 percent of the U.S. population that year, but represented 38.8 percent of the population in homeless shelters. Meanwhile, white families made up 63.7 percent of the country, but only filled 28.6 percent of the shelters.”
Hunger:
http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/african-american-hunger/african-american-hunger-fact-sheet.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ (African American Poverty African American Hunger Fact Sheet)
“One in four (26%) African American households are food insecure as compared with one in 10 (11%) of Caucasian households and one in seven (14%) households overall.”
Crime and discrimination: Kramer 2014, (Ronald C. Kramer, professor of sociology and director of the Criminal Justice Program at Western Michigan University, Poverty, Inequality, and Youth Violence, July 13 2014
“The links between extreme deprivation, delinquency, and violence, then, are strong, consistent, and compelling. There is little question that growing up in extreme poverty exerts powerful pressures toward crime. The fact that those pressures are overcome by some individuals is testimony to human strength and resiliency, but does not diminish the [there is an] importance of the link between social exclusion and violence.”
The harmful effects of racism today are enough to still convict whites of harmfulness to African Americans.