Memes

since the church is still the most racially segregated place in America

Unrelated to the rest of your comment, I find this observation perplexing. In Germany, the church I went to had close ties to several African communities. I loved their joyful, passionate style of worship-parties, more than what I learned of other churches in Germany. The Africans I knew at that church (refugees) were some of the kindest, loveliest people I've known. I'd credit that as being one of the good things I took from my faith: Growing up in frequent contact with different cultures and in a spirit of appreciation, I wasn't even conscious of the concept of racism.

My mom once told me that, when she'd been babysitting a friendly couple's son and pushing him in the stroller on a walk, she got evil looks from some people. For the longest time, I assumed that was just because it was apparent that we had come from different fathers and people thought we were both hers.

In middle or high school, when I learned about it from history class, the concept seemed so alien to me, like a relic of the past... until I realised that my primary school had one black kid, who was bullied (and a bit violent at times, which I'd now attribute to trauma from fleeing an active warzone coupled with facing racism in a fairly conservative town) while my secondary school had none, mostly upperclass "white" with a few other "white"-adjacent (Italian, Russian) ethnicities.

The idea that this childhood friend might have drawn evil looks because he was black hit me years later like a freight train of shattered childhood innocence.

(As an aside, that friend once declared that he's dark chocolate and I'm white chocolate and if that isn't the sweetest thing, I don't know what is.)