As teachers, the authors' lessons about contemporary racial inequality are complicated and contradicted by the rhetoric of color-blindness--the belief that race no longer matters for determining life chances--entrenched in the culture. Students remain attracted to notions of racism as a problem of the "past" and often reject the idea that racism is still a major problem today. In this paper we describe an effective classroom exercise, adapted from bell hooks, that we use to overcome these challenges by helping students learn about the persistence of contemporary racial inequality. We ask students to reflect on their own racial memories, and by integrating their own experiences with scholarly readings about race, power, and privilege, students learn to connect their racial memories to broader patterns of racial inequality. This exercise meets a key pedagogical goal of both feminist teachers and sociologists, which is to help students understand how their personal experiences are connected to broader social arrangements and patterns of inequality. We discuss both successes and challenges of the exercise in this article. (Contains 6 notes.)