I wouldn't say I'm old, really, but I've been around long enough to have developed a pretty mature world view, to have become less intellectually malleable than I'd like to be. So I appreciate this book more than any I've read in years for its having shaken my brain a bit, dislodging some of my cobwebs. The facts and myths of race and racism had gone almost wholly unexamined in my life. These had seemed issues not particularly relevant to me, as though I were not the beneficiary of a society biased in my favor. Now I have much more thinking to do.