My most beloved late grandmother once got into a rant, while we were out in public, about how black people were taking over the earth or something. She decided to give full voice to this in that most liberal of bastions, A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books, in San Francisco. I still recall trailing her up and down aisles, trying to distract her from her full-throated complaint about how black people got everything, and got away with everything, and were on the covers of all of these books.

I still have incredible gratitude to the young black man who smiled sympathetically at me as we scooted by.

This is a woman who did some really actually brave things for racial equality, at a time when it was not popular. But when people get older, a lot of stuff comes up and out that younger, more mentally acute people keep in.