Mill Creek Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

It was all around me, but it was subtle in our household.

My mother was an Oklahoman southerner who was raised by a father who “had to be a KKK member if he wanted to stay in business.”

My mom’s views were, “individually ‘those people’ were good, but as a race, they were not.” Her racist views were surprising to me since I knew that, when I was an infant, she hired a black woman as my nanny.

I came across racist sentiments in other parts of the world, too. For example, there were race conflicts at the military compound I was stationed at in Korea.

I remember another time whe...