And all this without anyone's even making an overtly anti-Black or otherwise hateful comment. Your story shows how powerful and far-reaching the social organization of prejudice is, and where the consequences for all parties lie. I still remember equally vividly the anti-Semitic outburst at a swimming and tennis club in the town where I went to high school, which was the last time I ever went back there. We remember the isolated instances because our lives are privileged, and we use privilege to escape, as you say, what we realize others are trapped in every day, throughout their lives.

You've also seen an example of the role of unconscious idea and behavior functioning in yourself, and you realize how much more sweeping the phenomenon is. Unconscious expression of racial bias, unconscious motivation to defiant behavior, and the cycle continues, trapping not only the powerful in their biases, but also the powerless in the hell made for them by those biases and the inefficacy and self-destructiveness of their rage at being mistreated.

The question in revision is whether the center of the essay, from your point of view, is your story, or what you learn from it. If the former, then you need only to rewrite the last paragraph, so that it's as tight and as powerful as you can make it. If the latter, then you need to rewrite the story with which you begin as a much smaller introductory image, placing it in the context of the larger lessons from the outset, devoting more of the essay, not just the concluding graf, to what you learned and where in turn that leads you.