"I thought we were past that," she said. "I didn't realize this was going on in the United States. In this day and age? I was shocked."
In renouncing his pastor's remarks, Obama urged blacks and whites to reach out to one another. He asked blacks to recognize that "most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. . . . No one's handed them anything. . . . They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped."
For whites, he explained that the roots of black anger trace a bitter path from slavery through segregation through legalized discrimination that kept generations of blacks from buying homes and working their way into the middle class.
Whites, he said, must acknowledge "that what ails the African American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination . . . are real and must be addressed."
Britton, in her Country HAIRitage salon, finds that argument unconvincing.
"They're bringing up slavery," she said, bewildered. "I had nothing to do with slavery."
'This is America'
Over lunch with two friends at the Grill on the Hill in Franktown, Pat Millsap expressed unease about her mother's views on race, especially Latino immigration. "I don't like the way she talks about it," she said.
Then Millsap, 52, looked down at her plate.
"You know," she said, "I've been looking for jobs in environmental education. A lot of them require that you speak Spanish. It sounds so awful to say this, but it's very frustrating. Shouldn't they learn English? This is America."
'Even I want to move'
As she put the finishing touches on a client's look in a Lithonia beauty salon, Griffin -- the woman with notably well-behaved children -- talked about her home in Conyers, a racially mixed suburb a few miles to the east.
She'd always thought of Conyers as a nice place to raise a family, with a slow-paced lifestyle and some pretty good schools. But lower-income blacks have begun to move in from central Atlanta, Griffin said, bringing crime and blight.
Whites have started moving out. Griffin, 36, blames that on racism.
Then she admits she's not comfortable, either, with what Conyers is becoming. The new black arrivals are dragging down the quality of life. Sometimes, she said, "even I want to move out."
