I'm really enjoying this thread.

"Why Am I So Black and Blue" by Louis Armstrong says a lot about racism in the U.S.

My mother used to tell a story that I don't believe, but it's a good story, so I'll repeat it. She grew up in a tenement in Brooklyn during the Depression. (How's that for fashionable roots?) She said that a blue-eyed, African American peddlar used to roam the streets of her neighborhood singing "Am I Blue?"