Cheato just called Chris Christie

[PatSeg]

61. I lived in Mississippi for about 5 minutes

when I was young, about the age when you left. I was born and raised in the Chicago area and the culture shock blew me away. I had no idea how bad it really was until I lived there. This was right before the Civil Rights Act passed. I may have seen you leaving!

I remember graffiti on the lockers at school: "The South will Rise again" and "Rebels". My American History teacher entered me in an essay contest and the prize was a portrait of Jefferson Davis for the school. Fortunately, I didn't win.

The racism was rather nonchalant and accepted like the weather, just a part of normal life. If I questioned people about it (which I did frequently), they were often caught off guard, as they apparently had never questioned it.

And the N-word was used in casual conversation without second thought, as if it was an acceptable noun like Italians or Germans. "Granny hired a N-word to clean the apartment for me." (A friend actually wrote that to me in a letter.) They felt no need to use a more polite word, because they saw nothing wrong with it. I think the casualness is what was the most offensive. It was rarely in anger or necessarily hateful, it was just their name for black people. Of course, there was anger and hate, but most of the time it was maddeningly ordinary.