John Blake was a "closeted biracial person" until he met his white mother

The Long Game

I don't know if I've ever read a book quite like John Blake's "More than I Imagine."

The subtitle is: "What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew"

John is a senior writer at CNN. In this conversation, John and I talk about:

• his very difficult childhood growing up in West Baltimore in the 60's and 70's
• how he grew up disliking white people even though his mother was white, in part because he was told after his mom disappeared that her family disliked black people
• how meeting his mother at age 17 for the first time began to broaden his understanding of racial difference
• his view that facts don't change people, relationships do
• the point that an emphasis on relationships does not mean policy changes aren't necessary, or that everything can be fixed through relationships or interpersonal kindness
• his wild ghost story
• his roller coaster faith journey, and how interracial churches were the demonstration of faith's reality he needed to believe in Christianity
• how there was a "golden age" of racial integration in America's schools from the early 70's to the late 80's, but how America believed a lie that it wasn't working and how we have now resegregated to 1968 levels, much of that due to our own choices
• how he believes racial integration is crucial to how our country grows stronger, and how our pulling apart and into racial segregation is causing many of our problems

This book is a great, great read. John is a great writer, and his story is incredibly personal and well told. It's riveting.

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