The never-ending pursuit of a better world

For those of us who grew up after the 1960s—at least those of us who are white and were raised in rural Minnesota—it seemed, perhaps, that the battle for civil rights had been fought and won, and that we, lucky us, didn’t have to inconvenience ourselves with it.

- David Banks, Tribune News Service

Of course we knew about the nation's history, ranging from its original sin of slavery to its stubborn grip on inequality to the tumultuous era immediately preceding us that aimed, finally, to change all that. But it was abstract.

We knew Black people had suffered. We knew white people had caused it - and had perceived a right to cause it - but those people weren't us. Maybe we felt superior because we lived in the North. Maybe in moments of real reflection we felt lucky that we didn’t have to truly know how we would have behaved in those situations ourselves. Maybe we felt we could be complacent.