I grew up in a house where nobody had to tell me to go to school every day and do my homework.

Too many whites still see blacks as a group apart.

Whites would rather not be involved in race matters, I think.

My father kept his distance from working-class American blacks.

How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

Sexism, like racism, goes with us into the next century. I see class warfare as overshadowing both.

I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.