Some of my best friends are Black the strange story of integration in America

Reading books - fiction or nonfiction - about racism always makes me uncomfortable at some point, but it's worth it because I learn something new about America, myself, other people, and circumstance. Today, in America, racism in the ‘public sector' is illegal. Any race can own a home, go to any public school, apply for any job, and live anywhere (so long as they have the financial or academic backing). So why is it that there is still such glaring disparity in these areas? Neighborhoods virtually segregated, schools that favor a race by population, and professional career areas that do not match the racial makeup of America?

This book tries to answer these questions. And one of the larger differences between this book and most other books I've read on racism is that the writer is white. And in a way, doesn't that mean I'm racist for even pointing that out? Who's to say whether a white man can have any authoritative opinion on racism? Well, I generally believe that the best source of any life experience is one who has experienced it. In the author's case, he grew up outside of Birmingham, AL in a well-to-do white neighborhood in the 1980s. His neighborhood was heavily white (and still is), and his school was heavily white. His school was one of the schools that bused students in from black neighborhoods to comply with federal anti-segregation laws, or those laws that came after the famous Brown v Board of Education in Topeka, KS. So Colby's a white guy, but he does have a lot of experience with racism, albeit an informed outsider's perspective.

4 major perspectives are covered throughout this book. The first section talks of schools and forced integration post-Brown v Board. Most of this consists of Colby's high school and a few students he knew that he interviewed during the course of writing this book. There's a lot of history too, about Alabama, and about forced integration which resulted in the busing of students from black neighborhoods to white schools in white school districts. I really enjoyed this section, and the author gives some insight into the goods and bads of forced integration, many of which I'd never bothered considering before this.

The next section was my favorite - housing, home ownership, and the mortgage industry. I used to sell homes; I would proudly wear my little R (is for REALTOR) pin showcasing the largest professional association in America. Well, to my chagrin, I learned that much of my famed club's original Code of Ethics was chock full of racism. When I was taking classes to become licensed, I learned terms like blockbusting, redlining, and steering, and just memorized those definitions. Colby's chapters on housing get to the core of these terms, and how the past behaviors still produce barriers today. I really thought when learning about blockbusting for my license exam that surely people didn't get away with that? How could they? Turns out J.C. Nichols. He became so wealthy from his racist real estate business that he was able to build subdivisions, and build the famous Kansas City Plaza. A chapter like this makes me think we have a long way to go in America to fully get rid of racism. I mean, we have laws against this kind of stuff now, right?

And then chapters about those careers that continue to be segregated today. The last few chapters talk about segregation in church, and one town that has 2 Catholic churches almost across the street from one another, but one is black and the other's white.

Although I liked most aspects of this book, I did start to get a little annoyed with the author's overly chummy writing style. But overall, some excellent history and eye-opening perspectives can be found here.