The white problem

Ebony

I grew up in Corte Madera, Marin County, in the 1940s and 1950s. 

One of my vivid memories as an adolescent was an Ebony magazine in the school library with a cover like the one above when I was at Tamalpais High School, probably in 1956. 

That memory stuck with me, prompting the question: What is the race issue in the country all about?

Tam High had all the black kids in Marin, since one also noticed that all the black people in Marin County lived in Marin City. I never heard anyone discuss or even acknowledge the reality of this race-based housing discrimination in Marin. (My parents weren't racists---I never heard the word "nigger" in our house growing up---or race ever discussed, for that matter, which, yes, is a more common manifestation of racism.) 

But the answer to the question above soon became apparent to me as a young man in San Francisco: The country's race problem was because of white racism and nothing else.

Obviously, that's still true today in the Age of Trump.

William Macy and the college cheating scandal.