AlterNet: Finding Words to Talk About Race: "I had no language to talk about these divides of difference. 'Race' meant white or black. 'Ethnicity' meant ... well, most people weren't exactly sure what it meant, but ethnic food was anything spicy, and ethnic clothes were folksy costumes. To actually discuss prejudice or discrimination, its causes and consequences and daily realities — that was as distasteful as talking about sex at the dinner table. Even when James Byrd, Jr., was murdered in Jasper, Texas -- he was chained by his ankles and dragged behind a pickup truck -- and the murderers were tried and convicted in my hometown, people didn't talk about it."