I was stupid to believe

Nope. I'm white, but we lived in a very diverse area of California when I was a kid. I had never witnessed a person behaving in a racist way, or even met an openly racist person. When we moved to a very small town in the south I was completely culture shocked. It was horrible. People would say the most mind blowing things about black people, and I would be like "Uhm, thats racist" but I'd be laughed at like I was the one with the problem. When the Jena 6 scandal came out a few years ago I really wasn't shocked, because I lived in that area of Louisiana I know how backward people are. If you live in a really big city, or on the East/West coast it really can be shocking to even imagine that people who aren't white are still being treated like second class citizens in parts of our own country. We're suppose to be equal.