Bordering the North and the South, Kentucky used to be a slave state, though its sons fought on both sides of the Civil War.
One of Kentucky's most famous adopted sons was Stephen Foster, America's first great songwriter, who made his name writing minstrel songs. Two of them ended up becoming the official anthems of Southern states: "Swanee River" for Florida (which he never visited) and "My Old Kentucky Home" (which he did).
As in Padstow, both songs had to be modified because they contained the word "darkies". Kentucky changed the offending word to "people" in 1986… after a group of Japanese students serenaded the General Assembly with "My Old Kentucky Home".
For most of my youth, I had a black best friend—later my best man—who hailed from the deepest backwoods of Kintuckee: Hazard, to be precise. (TV's Dukes of Hazzard wasn't actually set there, but it could've been.)
Through him and other friends, I learned what it was like to be a member of a minority, albeit in a very limited sense.
Blondish and blue-eyed, I was often the only white in black churches, talent shows and neighbourhoods. My girlfriend and I were the only mixed couple at the prom, and I reciprocated at her predominantly black school.
I left Kentucky to study international relations at a university in Washington, D.C. (aka "Chocolate City" among blacks), and during summer breaks, I worked for a newspaper in Indianapolis, where I covered migrant farm workers and the Miss Black America Pageant (the same event where Mike Tyson later earned his rape conviction).
After university, I lived in Peru at the height of a terrorist insurgency, travelling to shantytowns and villages where I was at least a head taller than the locals; an easy target for any would-be yanqui-killers. Instead, I met my ex-wife (insert your own joke here.)
As for my second wife, well, she actually is African, having gone to school with Nelson Mandela's kids and protested against apartheid as a mixed-race citizen of South Africa.
I mention all this knowing that veteran race-baiters will dismiss it as just a longwinded version of the old cri de coeur of a closet racist: "Some of my best friends are black!"
All I can say is: judge for yourself.
In my experience, race relations are never black and white: just when you think you've worked out people's differences, along comes an exception to contradict everything you've ever thought.
So it's with real trepidation that I write about race in the UK…
One of Kentucky's most famous adopted sons was Stephen Foster, America's first great songwriter, who made his name writing minstrel songs. Two of them ended up becoming the official anthems of Southern states: "Swanee River" for Florida (which he never visited) and "My Old Kentucky Home" (which he did).
As in Padstow, both songs had to be modified because they contained the word "darkies". Kentucky changed the offending word to "people" in 1986… after a group of Japanese students serenaded the General Assembly with "My Old Kentucky Home".
For most of my youth, I had a black best friend—later my best man—who hailed from the deepest backwoods of Kintuckee: Hazard, to be precise. (TV's Dukes of Hazzard wasn't actually set there, but it could've been.)
Through him and other friends, I learned what it was like to be a member of a minority, albeit in a very limited sense.
Blondish and blue-eyed, I was often the only white in black churches, talent shows and neighbourhoods. My girlfriend and I were the only mixed couple at the prom, and I reciprocated at her predominantly black school.
I left Kentucky to study international relations at a university in Washington, D.C. (aka "Chocolate City" among blacks), and during summer breaks, I worked for a newspaper in Indianapolis, where I covered migrant farm workers and the Miss Black America Pageant (the same event where Mike Tyson later earned his rape conviction).
After university, I lived in Peru at the height of a terrorist insurgency, travelling to shantytowns and villages where I was at least a head taller than the locals; an easy target for any would-be yanqui-killers. Instead, I met my ex-wife (insert your own joke here.)
As for my second wife, well, she actually is African, having gone to school with Nelson Mandela's kids and protested against apartheid as a mixed-race citizen of South Africa.
I mention all this knowing that veteran race-baiters will dismiss it as just a longwinded version of the old cri de coeur of a closet racist: "Some of my best friends are black!"
All I can say is: judge for yourself.
In my experience, race relations are never black and white: just when you think you've worked out people's differences, along comes an exception to contradict everything you've ever thought.
So it's with real trepidation that I write about race in the UK…
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