social issues/bad things in my book

yep, there is loads of bad stuff happening in my book.
but that's kind of what a book is, right? A book is about something that happens, and at least some element of it is always sad. but anyway, back to the book.
First a little summary of the book. this book needs some explaining.
I, since you don't know, am reading the book 'a heartbreaking work of staggering genius' by dave Eggers. if you can call it a book. It's a 437 page stream of conciousness novel. it is the story of about ten years of david eggers' life (the exact timing is hard to tell, because a lot of the events in the book seem in no way related to each other.) It's all about random things that happened to the author, things which could really happen to anyone. It also goes into a lot of detail about whatever strange, pointless, or completely unrelated things Eggers was thinking at that very moment. I used to think that i was pretty good at complicated books, but this one is like Lewis Carrolls maze. the problem is that it starts telling you about something, and then it goes off on some other memory and then another, and then in the end you can't tell what's supposed to be real or not. so. it's not that i hate the book. it's actually quite a good book. it can be really funny. but the problem is, i keep thinking 'oh god, is this how everyone else thinks? is everyone this ADD? does everyone curse every other word in their head?' It's hard to explain. you should read it. or maybe not.
But, befuddling as it is, this book did manage to pack in some social issues. one of these was racism. yeah, yeah, that's very broad. don't judge me!!! i'm about to make it better. The main characters (the author, his younger brother, his sister and friends) are mostly white. one of the big characters, shalini, is indian. but no one is particularly racist to each other. but there is this thing, when the author thinks something, and then thinks."is that racist?" and he's terrified to sound racist, even just in is head. i thought it was just him being insane, but i realized that i do that too. i think something, and then mentally slap myself for being racist every one has said at one time or another 'not to be racist, but...'. it reminded me of thoughtcrime, from the book 1984.
but which is better? to be correcting what we think, or to make unthinking and offensive racist slurs? It's creepy to think that we don't have freedom of thought, but does ot count if it's our own selves doing the policing? And of course, it's unnacceptable to be racist. the perfect soloution, of course, would be to have a balance.