Both in my boyhood and now, St. Louis can be a racial pressure cooker, and people shouldn’t be surprised when the lid blows.

I want to believe I grew up in an unprejudiced family, but I know it’s not true. My mother and aunts, when they spoke about Black people at all, tried to be charitable, but they also were patronizing. “They’re good people,” they’d say, or, “The ones we knew in Arkansas were always good to us.”

The path to “salvation” isn’t as straight and narrow as so much of the church seems to believe

Once you're done reading this, ask yourself, "Where have I seen this before? Where am I seeing this now?" Unless you're blind, or choose to be, I think you'll know where you're seeing it. Seeing it is the first step to stopping it, and maybe you'll help put an end to it.