I also grew up in a city that was majority black, in Georgia. I never thought anything of it. My family and I ended up moving away when I was in middle school but I visited friends occasionally after that. Many years later, I told my new girlfriend that I thought I might want to retire there. I love the nature there, the endless rolling hills, all kinds of different dirt and clay, oaks and pines for days. And they have amazing food, and some of the best (and sometimes the worst) people I’ve ever met. She said she had never been there, lived in Florida her whole life, so we visited and she decided that she liked it too but needed to spend more time there to really know if that would be a good long term future for her.

She told her parents about all this and the first thing her dad said was “did you know it’s full of black people?” I lived there for many years and never once thought that there were too many or too few people nearby of any certain skin color, but the first thing this guy thinks about when he hears “Georgia” is lots of black people, and on top of that, that it’s a bad thing. Honestly, kinda speechless, there was nothing to say but “yeah, and…?” And we try to avoid spending time with him as much as possible now.

I think that presenter you had was doing a good job of pointing to what so many people feel so awkward about. Acknowledging differences in race is not inherently bad. People just don’t know how to handle it because too often, we remain isolated from each other. More interaction with people who are different than you will lead to greater understanding and normalization.