A WINDSWEPT WINTER’S day in February 1992. The Decatur branch of the First Union Bank. Newly arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, I am trying to open what the Americans call “a checking account”. Seated opposite me is an elegant young black woman, dripping with costume jewellery. Two decades later, she could have passed for Condoleezza Rice.

She peers into her computer. I am being screened. Looking up, she shoots me a sneer.