When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society.  It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry.

While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history.

That’s the history that Chris Tomlinson takes on, with respect to his own family, in his book and in the documentary Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black.

My conversation with Chris Tomlinson: