“The older I got, the more I realized that our acceptance was . . . fragile, conditional. The signs were small but telling.” 

FRUSTRATION WITH MY COUNTRY came first. One evening in the early 1970s, my mom and dad debated whether to allow me and my sister to watch a tv news special about the 1963 Birmingham civil rights protests. We were kids, in the single digits. Dad, Eddie, said yea; Mom, Edith, nay. They need to learn about it some time, he said. Dad won.