Hatred and injustice in a society

In the book The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Racism is a huge epidemic in the 1950's - 1960's and life is especially extremely difficult for African Americans. However, Lily does not understand to what extreme racist whites could go to. Lily at first thinks that colored people exaggerate the supposed racist attacks against them, yet Lily is surrounded by African Americans throughout the whole book and its not until she witnesses injustice and unfairness with people close to her that she realizes the society she lives in is a hateful one. Furthermore, she learns to overcome her own racism, but those thoughts come to an end when she meets August and Zach. The only African American whom Lily has socialized daily with most of her life is Rosaleen who has been a victim of racism variety of times and has become a mother figure for her. Rosaleen is Lily's nanny and friend, who originally was a peach picker in the fields of T. Ray, Lily's father. However, after Lily's mom passed away, Rosaleen was assigned by T. Ray to take care of Lily. Rosaleen goes along with everything Lily wants to do because she loves and pity the girl and she's a big and loud woman who stands up to herself even to racist white men. As a result, this particular trait is what causes her to be assaulted by racist males and leads to her and Lily's arrest. One of the men who verbally abused her wants Rosaleen to apologize, but she reluctantly refuses to do so. Lily is then bailed out by T. Ray, but they leave Rosaleen behind so of course Lily escapes to get her out of jail, but she's informed that she has been taken to the hospital because she was brutally beaten by one of the men. As she arrives to the hospital, she learns whites and blacks are separated and soon discovers Rosaleen isn't lying about how bad racial division is. For example, when a person tells lily that, "You're lost, all right. You need to go to the other side of the building. You're in the colored