I love my dad, and this is overall a generally positive picture of him. I’m not “judging him harshly” by saying he’s a racist. It’s just a statement of fact. Good people can hold and perpetuate racist ideas. For instance, the first time Nelson Mandela flew on a plane operated by a black pilot, he was terrified because he thought flying a plane was a white man’s job. Like Mandela, my dad was born into an apartheid system. If Mandela, the saintly leader of the anti-apartheid movement, can’t escape conditioned racism against his own people, how can my dad, a white man born in the South? The goal of this was to highlight the enduring power of racism and how it can corrupt otherwise good people.