As we concluded this year’s Juneteenth holiday, I was reminded of the profound disconnect many have when it comes to race relations. Political hustlers and the news media (but I repeat myself) will have us all believe that race relations are at an all-time low.

A friend posted a tongue-in-cheek comment: “So, what are we supposed to eat on the Juneteenth holiday?” I responded, “Beans, greens, and cornbread,” followed by: “You can take the Southern boy out of the South…but he will just bring it with him.” I was just expressing my love for good old Southern cooking and any excuse to eat it.

My inbox was filled with hate mail decrying me as “a racist who is making fun of the black culture’s food group.” Those were the nice responses. Much were far uglier.

The reality is my youth was spent with black families, and we not only held them in high esteem, but these friends were our hunting and fishing partners with whom we shared many memorable meals together.

My father was a switch engineer for Southern Railroad (later Norfolk Southern), and his fireman — back when railroads had such a position — was a black gentleman I remember simply as “George.” He and my father were very close and shared a passion for quail hunting and the talented dogs that we followed in that pursuit.

George was well respected in the Southern community in which he resided despite his community having a hateful element of the Ku Klux Klan — haters now long dead and gone in most of the Deep South. His talent for training bird dogs was widespread, and his close friendship with my father was enough to give pause to anyone who might wish George or his family any harm. A friend of my father at dad’s funeral told me, “I’ve known your father most of his life — Mac never started a single fight in his life, but he finished every one of them.”

Among my many memories of George was that he supplemented his family income by selling sugar cane sorghum, which he made on his small farm — the old way. His sorghum press was driven by his mule, and the pressed liquid from the cane stalks flowed into a long shallow pan heated by a hickory fire. It was a relatively simple process; when the liquid reached the desired temperature and color, it was ready to be bottled as syrup.

George’s children and I were tasked with removing the leaves and seed heads from the harvested sugar cane stalks, as they can impart a bitter flavor to the syrup. The harvested cane was filled in an old wagon that was positioned near the press. We would grab an armload of stalks, cut the leaves and seed heads off with our pocketknives, and race to see who could make the biggest pile.

My father and George would skim the foam and impurities from the boiling liquid while us children worked a safe distance away.

The sounds and smells of this process were intoxicating, but no more intoxicating than the smell that would emanate from George’s kitchen when his wife would prepare a feast for all who had helped make the syrup.

It was the recollection of these wonderful meals and camaraderie that prompted my “beans, greens, and cornbread” remark. But those meals also included country ham, fried potatoes, “cat head” biscuits, and fresh syrup from the day’s labor — topped off with the laughter and love that filled the room.

George confided to me at my father’s funeral that he was going to quit the railroad and just work his farm. “All these years I couldn’t wait to get to work to spend a day with Mac,” he said. “Won’t be the same now…”

I have long suspected that the average person, regardless of race or creed, just wants to get along. Working side by side with families of a different race instilled this belief early on and has informed it ever since.

What has changed most over the last 30 years of my life is the proliferation of hate-hustling politicians and their complicit media, who saturate the news cycle with the most negative and divisive rhetoric they can conjure up.

It is long past time for this to end and for loving each other to prevail. I will be branded by some as naïve for that statement, but I’m not. I’ve simply lived alongside people of other races enough — worked and sweated with them, shared meals with them, and laughed and mourned with them — to know that for most of America, that is reality.

They were, and remain, my brothers and sisters.