Earlier this summer, Charles Ryan Long brought his mother to the StoryCorps booth in Chicago. Yvonne McKinney talked with her son about parenting, about religion and how she sees the world. Towards the end of the conversation, one notable difference between the mother and son emerged. McKinney has lived in Arizona for about a decade. As an African American in a community of mostly white people, she says it’s not uncommon to get uninformed questions about racial differences. Her son is familiar with such questions. But he has a very different response to them than his mother.

Bill Healy produces StoryCorps Chicago for WBEZ and teaches journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him @chicagoan.