If you model (we used to call it teach) racism, what your community is going to have is racism.

A message of hope in a time when hope is microscopic. I regard it with caution. Suspicion. I struggle to lose the suspicion. This is Appalachia. “Down here” racism lurks in the working shadows. I have never seen an African-American in a downtown restaurant. Or African-Americans downtown at all. There is the black neighborhood. There is the white neighborhood. Period. One does not cross over into the other. As a photojournalist, this made no sense to me. So I ventured out into the white neighborhood taking photographs of mainly locations that felt visually “southern.” I did the same thing in the African-American locations that also felt visually “southern.” What almost shocked me was that through my own personal racist lens, I had never seen differences before. The two groups of neighborhoods were so different, one might be set on Europa, and the other on Saturn. Work is like that, too. African-Americans make and deliver the food. White people eat it. Whites go to the white school. African-Americans go to the black school. The white school is brand spanking new. The black school comes from the war between the states. I never kid. White people park on the streets. African-Americans park behind the stores. White people man the check outs, African-Americans work in the back. White people deal with the money. African-Americans unload trucks. I photographed the line of folks at the vaccination center where I got my shot. There were, for whatever reason, no African-Americans there.