Y’know, most of my family thought as you do, and that’s the way I was raised to think (though not so crudely as you put it). Then I joined the Navy, saw the world, and saw just how ignorant and bigoted my family and I were there in the MS Delta. My experience is precisely why back in the 1800’s, Mark Twain wrote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Same thing goes within our own nation — people are much the same, no matter where you go, no matter their race or religion. The inability to open your mind to this fact doesn’t hurt the Black community nearly so much as it hurts you and any children you may have by choosing to remain ignorant.