“For as long as I can remember, it seems that there was no aspect of my family’s reality that wasn’t affected by whites, right on down to the creation of the neighborhood I grew up in.” 

McCall’s neighborhood was built by a white developer to provide black residents of Portsmouth, Virginia a place to live. The residents were all black and the entire neighborhood was designed and constructed by white people. The white influence on McCall’s life influenced his psychology and maturity in profound ways.

“It was only years later, when black communities as we knew them started falling apart, that I came to understand the system for the hidden blessings it contained: It had built-in mechanisms for reinforcing values and trying to prevent us from becoming the hellions some of us turned out to be.” 

The surrogate system was one of community policing that pervaded black neighborhoods in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The white community was not looking out for them, so they looked out for each other. Adults treated all children as if they were their own and the responsibility for raising children was on the whole community.

“It seemed we were niggers by birthright and destined to spend our entire lives striving in vain to shed that rap. But white people could never be niggers, even when they acted like niggers with a capital N.” 

Black children received heightened scrutiny from their parents when around white people, and were subtly made to believe white people were superior. Black children were taught that they must impress whites, while white children needn’t accord black adults with the same respect.