Bell grew up with a White mom who was always getting mad at people who were racist to her son, storming in to the school to yell at people, for example. His folks were divorced and Bell also had a Black dad who didn’t really talk to him about racism. He experienced a lot of shitty treatment from classmates, cops, and authority figures and discusses how he grew up learning to stick up for himself but also trying to determine what the “right” way was to deal with racism and awful people, how that affected his professional and personal life, and how he talked to his own kids.