Sitting in a parked bus alone with a black bus driver, I began to tell him about my book, Off the RACE Track. After more than an hour, he began to open up to me. About that time a white coworker walked on the bus, sat down, and listened in. The 70 year old bus driver began to tell us about how when he was a child his mother, a nurse, would take him downtown with her. Tears came to his eyes as he told me that they weren’t allowed to eat in any restaurant.

The white guy chimed in, “But things are better now, right?” The bus driver replied, “Yes, things are better.” Then the white guy got up and left the bus. A person’s racial pain shouldn’t be brushed aside so easily.

My heart was deeply touched as the driver continued to tell me stories of his pain. When I got home and began to share his stories with my wife, I began to weep.