WHAT DOES A WHITE BOY KNOW ABOUT GROWING UP BLACK IN THE SOUTH?
I remembered the first time my best friend yelled “nigger” on the playground of our all-white public school in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama. A third-grader at the time, I still remember the shock and shame that rushed over me. There were no Blacks around to receive the insult. It was just a schoolboy’s taunt hurled without thinking, and there I stood on the dusty red clay playground wondering how my best friend could say that word. Better to say “damn” or “hell” in my family than to say “nigger.” He had stepped over the line, broken the code, and things were never the same between us. What does a white boy know about growing up Black in the South? I remembered the separate water fountains and restrooms for “whites” and “coloreds” and the separation on the city buses. There were painted lines on the seat backs and on the floor of the buses separating the rows assigned to the two races. I had forgotten the painted lines for all these years. I remembered the summer I was nine when I
