The Help

I am almost finished with the book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  (Already I highly recommend it to you.)  The story takes place in 1963 in Jackson, MS.  It recounts life in white households with black househelp, particularly those women who helped raise the white children.  The question that keeps coming to mind as I read is "What would my own response have been to white/black relations if I had lived in the 1960's South?"  I'd like to think I would have been one of those who would have treated blacks as equals, created in the image of God.  But there were institutional and societal barriers in place that made this complicated.  Would I have been willing to cross those barriers?  What is the equivalent barriers today that I have been unwilling to cross to connect to people who are unlike me?  I don't have answers, but I do have lots of questions.