"May you live in interesting times," goes the Chinese adage.It's true that I don't often give more than one star to books I couldn't finish, but I can't argue with the fact that there's a lot to praise here. We haven't been shaken to the core by such upheaval since the late '60s a time when the prescribed way to deal with the chaos was to Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.īut as natural as the tendency might be to become islands unto ourselves during such periods of unrest, we should remember that we are fortunate to be alive right now. Of course, the president was right to reflect during his speech on such harsh realities as the opaque job market, the health care crisis, the apathy toward government and racial civil war.
The president - all of us - would have learned a lot from those students - that before we can come up with solutions to our cultural problems, or yield to them, we need first to talk. Smith should have been there on that sparkling afternoon, that unprecedented day, when students stripped off their blinders and finally stood face-to-face, confronting the fears and anger behind each black and white face. What was important was, "Everyone's talking."ĭr. But as the brave white student who stood on the bench put it, it didn't matter that a lot of the "pointless" arguing was still taking place.
Yes, many of the students, black and white, still argued more out of genuine ignorance than out of a need to understand. They swapped stories about growing up in inner city, suburban and private schools. They talked not about classes or professors but about each other - about what it felt like to be followed by security officers from the time you entered a mall until you left. At a school where black students have always clustered together in the back of the lunchroom where black and white fraternities and sororities rarely, if ever, socialize together the black and white sides merged. The verbal gunfire went back and forth until a strange thing happened.
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