"A typical white person"-Barrack assumes we are better than we are...

And nobody says that. We hear all about Grandmother's fear of black males but little about her compassion that he assumes is typical of whites. When taken in by his Grandmother it is 1971 and he is 10 years old. His grandmother is by then 50 or so....since WW2 she has lived through Jim Crow, integration, and by 71 the nascentcy of black pride. The Panthers are running wild, Vietnam is tearing the country apart, and her daughter returned home with a half black child. And he assumes she was typical. He acknowledges a simple truth-that a women born in the twenties would be unlikely to have had enough contacts with blacks to be comfortable with them-does anyone doubt that?
...I was born in 1953 and my first real black contacts were in 7th grade-12 years later. By 1971 I had dropped out of high school and had had relationships with blacks for five years. That was about the year an uncle of mine adopted two young mixed racial kids he was a foster father to-at that place and time it was unheard of, or close, but I think contacts with Koreans about the time I was born may have liberalized his views.
...I did the service in the early 70's and found that blacks and indians (american) and hispanics were just people even when you lived with them.I got over skin being anything more than the wrapper on a book whose content I hadn't read. That was worth learning but a rare opportunity.She, whom Barrack calls typical, hadn't had that chance. And then he describes both her love and uncertainty and calls them typical.I wish every person was so optimistic.