I realize I am generalizing and tiptoeing along the edge of the territory into which we never venture very far in the American national conversation: The fact that there are whole neighborhoods into which cabdrivers refuse to take a fare; that there are people among us who live in circumstances we are ashamed to talk about, children who live that way; the fact that there are huge quadrants of our cities where people like me—and not just white people like me—simply do not go, places we do not see, do not want to think about as we are sipping our designer martinis in swanky downtown bistros
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