Tag: racism

Guest post: My first contact with the racism virus

At 9, I had an up-close and personal look at the racial divide. It happened during my family’s trip to a suburban Chicago shopping mall. As we exited a large department store, another child got my attention. He was with his family, too. I wondered if he was just as amazed by being in the 1970s megastructure. But he was amazed by something else. He yelled, “Mommy, look at all the Black people!” I looked to see the people he

The slippery slope to bigotry and hatred

This past week’s events in Charlottesville have hit a little too close to home. We live just 100 miles, or less than 2 hours away. It’s a town I’ve been to many times. A quiet college town nestled at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Not a place I would expect to see as the location for hate-fueled violence and death. But it did happen. And it’s a wake-up call for me that there is no place