It's time to be candid. Some of my whiter friends and family wonder why I'm so hung up about race. It's a story some fifty years in the making, but I'll try to be brief.

I'll be using an evil and very blunt term that begins with 'n', so be warned. It's relevant here, otherwise I wouldn't use it.

I live with a daily struggle. I'm racist. While not consciously so, the fact remains. A bit of background is in order. Being a person, half-century in age, at this point in history, I was raised during a time when cultural-generation attitudes on race had finally started down the long road of change.

Previously, racism was accepted and even encouraged. I remember in fourth grade "nigger" jokes were all the rage. Among the white kids, of course. I should write "nigger" "jokes", for those so-called jokes were no laughing matter. They were violent in nature as well as violence in and of themselves.

And my formative years were spent in that culture.

I have deeply ingrained behaviors and impulses which I must watch with vigilance, for even though I knew at a tender age that racism is at best nonsensical, I eventually came to understand that it is violent and deadly.

But cultural conditioning is strong. I can't change what goes on inside my head, and I fear the things I might do or say , should dementia set in (It runs in my family).

However, I do have the ability, and responsibility, not only to avoid passing on my acculturation, but also to teach my children to make the differences I was unable to make.