I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1954--which means that I was born into a segregated society, the U.S.'s version of apartheid. I got the better deal, of course, being white. True, being born female, lesbian and working class presented challenges, but nothing compared to the outrageous daily degradation that African-Americans were subjected to under segregation.
As the extraordinarily wise Martin Luther King, Jr. often noted, segregation harmed Southern whites, too. It endangered the good in our humanity; it twisted into ugly shapes the hearts and souls of those who embraced it. So when he spoke of liberation, he included all of us. We were all in need of it. (We still are, being human and thus being prone to react to differences with animosity or at least the notion that any difference in appearance or thought means that one must be better than the other. But that's a different diary.)
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