Excerpt: 'Heroes Among Us'

Jan. 5, 2009— -- In his new book, ABC News anchor John Quinones describes racism in action as he reflects on his own childhood.

Read an excerpt from "Heroes Among Us" below.

Chapter One

Heroes Everywhere

On a Saturday morning, at a bakery near Waco, Texas, I found a display of bigotry as fresh as the coffee and pastries people stopped in to buy.

A young Muslim woman dressed in a traditional headscarf ordered a pastry from the man behind the counter.

"You'll have to leave," he told her.

"What do you mean?" the woman asked politely.

"We don't serve camel jockeys in here," he said.

Several customers milled about the store, looking uncomfortable, trying not to pay attention. I was watching all this on TV monitors in a room in the back of the bakery. Both the Muslim woman and the man behind the counter were actors and hidden cameras were rolling. It was all part of the TV show I host for ABC News called What Would You Do?

"You won't serve me?" asked the woman, seemingly dumbfounded.

"How do I know you don't have a bomb in that bag?" the man behind the counter retorted.

"This is outrageous," said the woman playing the part of a Muslim.

I watched in astonishment what happened next. An older man approached and gave our man behind the counter an emphatic thumbs-up. "Good job," he said. "I like the way you dealt with her." Then he took his bag of donuts and left.

It was a scene I was ashamed to have witnessed.

Moments later, in the parking lot with a camera crew in tow, I caught up with this man as he climbed into his pickup truck.

"Excuse me, sir," I said. "My name is John Quiñones."

But before I could ask him a single question, he jumped out of his truck, jabbed his finger in my face and snapped: "You're not an American."

That hit me hard.

I'm a native, sixth-generation American. But it's true I grew up in segregation, in the barrio. I'd known where "my place" was, and that was on the west side of San Antonio. The north side of the city, which was mostly white, was pretty much forbidden to someone who looked like me. These were the unspoken rules of my childhood, and now I was hearing them loud and clear.