I’m glad your family wasn’t as resistant as my own. After my mother passed, I found a letter my grandmother had written to me but never sent, warning me that my wife was only coming to America to help tear the nation down. I guess that’s what happens after a lifetime of Jim Crow followed by several decades of eagerly drinking every bit of grape Kool-Aid offered by racist right-wing pundits and preachers. When I see the people protesting against the lockdown — somehow thinking it’s a really great time to buy more guns — I see they’re the same people who claimed to be the modern-day Tea Party when Obama was president. Same falsity and insanity, different year.

But I don’t blame them nearly as much as I do right-wing media and right-wing evangelicals. Those are the real villains, the ones who’ve kept racism disguised as nationalism strong among the Right ever since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. And for the life of me, I don’t see any end to it.