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I grew up in a small town in northwest Washington State.
I thought racism was dead, like the history books said. Like my white teachers taught. And as far as I could tell, in my white community—there weren’t any racial issues. In the 2010 census, my town was 91% white, and 0.4% African American—and that was six years after I left the town, and they’ve been (tongue-in-cheek) trending toward a more diverse population for decades.