Clyde Taylor
Milwaukee, WI
I’m 56. When I was a teen, I thought that by now (the 21st century) race would be far less an issue in American life than it was when rioting broke out just a mile from my home in the summer of 1967. Too bad, I was wrong. From “rag head” epitaphs, to rants against immigrants, to racial comments made by adults in the grandstand at High School athletic events, to pre-kindergarten kids referring to my school aid wife as “white lady,” and black teens exchanging greetings with “my nigga” on the public bus … my long deceased grandmother born in 1893 and raised in Winder, Georgia would be shocked by the changes (esp. Barack Obama), but she’d see too much of “back home” for me. There remains a long way to go before we can purge race from our social consideration … so sad. Sometimes, I have to cry for my country.
