I was born in the American South in 1942 — “in the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as the final stanza of the national anthem puts it. Francis Scott Key wrote those words in 1814. However, they were not true then, nor in 1942 nor today in US President Donald Trump’s all-too-reactionary America. My blackness consigned obstacles to me, as it would have in 1814 and 1942, that white people simply don’t have. Let me explain. Life under r…