Racism is not dying

[elocs]

26. I would have learned racism from my father but I didn't

even though he was a poor man from rural Mississippi and we lived in Memphis when I was 4. I can remember playing with black kids and I knew they had different color skin but it had no more meaning to me than different color hair and I never heard any different from my dad. I can remember black women babysitting me and he would address them with "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" just like any other woman. Granted, I lead a very sheltered life at that age but I was never taught that black people were inferior.
But when we moved to Wisconsin when I started school, to a small city that might have had a couple of black families in town, that's when I learned about racism and it was a shock to me.
At school during recess some white kids were picking on a younger black boy and pushing him around and knocking him down and it suddenly occurred to me that it was because the kid was black. That happened nearly 60 years ago and I remember it distinctly to this day.