New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner, creator of the MyBrownbaby.com parenting website, wrote on cocoafab.com that she wasn’t surprised by Deen’s revelations.
“This is a 66-year-old woman from the South, born close enough to segregation to see the whites of Jim Crow’s eyes,” Millner wrote. “I’ll bet she knows how rank he smells—that rancid, putrid bouquet that escapes when the word “nigger” curls off the tongue. I’m betting, too, that she knows how scary he looks on a dark country road on a hot Southern summer’s night. Or in an equally hot kitchen where Negroes toil.”
“I’m not saying this is the way of every 66-year-old white woman from the South,” Millner concluded. “But I’ve been living in the South for almost a decade, and I’ve got enough honest, good white friends down here who’ve told me in confidence that their grandfathers and daddies and uncles still have white sheets hanging in their closets—not the kind for beds, but the ones rocked with pride in front of burning crosses. Racist behavior lingers—dances all up and through the DNA.”
