I Thought Injustice Didn’t Have to Do With Race

Here’s what changed my mind

Photo: Mads Perch/Getty Images

When I was a girl, my mother (who is Black) taught me that slavery was something terrible that happened in the past. She said that because the North won the Civil War, and because the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow, Black people were now equal in the eyes of the law, and the only thing keeping us down was ourselves.