We did not tell our children they would not succeed because of their skin color. We waited until race clobbered hopes, then we’d try to explain the situation: Most Euros did not like us, so we had to overcome by working harder. We had to work twice as hard to get half as far. Accept that fact and don’t complain. No one ever explained the economic system of slavery, though we knew about our slave ancestors.
After Emmett Till, living the life of a Negro became serious business…
Euros lived in a democracy; Africamericans lived in a police state. But most Euros didn’t see the contradiction.
from a memoir by William Melvin Kelley, Harpers, August 2012, pg. 53-57I don’t believe that I have ever read a better description of racism in America than this short memoir.