African American

Maybe the best I’ve ever seen on DU, and I’ve been around here from pretty much day one.

I’m a lot older than you, definitely not overweight, and still have my hair. I’m from deep east Texas, where racism was deeply imbedded in the culture. Even my parents were vocally racist, as were all my friends and some of the school teachers. I still to this very day get racist emails passed around by people from my high school class, even after I’ve asked them to stop.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I have learned a few lessons about racism.

Later on in my life, I earned a PhD from a very conservative Texas university and was recruited by a private university on the east coast. The kind of university that would have never have accepted me as a student but wanted me to teach there, go figure. I have never, even to this day, been able to shake my Texas drawl. Because of that, some of my fellow faculty I suppose just assumed I was racist. Soon after I met them they began the racist jokes and rants. These were people that would ultimately decide if I got tenure or not, but I said fuck it I’m not putting up with this shit anymore, career be damned. I took a stand and stood up to them. They actually respected that and later on made me associate dean of the graduate school. Lesson learned: stand up to racism, point it out and condemn it in a professional and civil way. The human heart always recognizes truth when it hears it.

While on my dean gig, I argued with faculty and administrators alike that we should accept more black students to our graduate school. It was a hard sell, they were afraid it would lower our average admission scores, the holy grail of graduate programs. I’ve always been pretty good at math so I convinced them by showing them the numbers. Lesson learned: facts matter. Even a hard hearted administrator cannot argue with truth.

Now that I’m old and worn out, but still have my hair, I moved to the mountains of northern New Mexico and built my little retirement home. I had help from several subcontractors, one of which began the racist bullshit as as he heard my Texas drawl. I’m pretty good at this by now so I fired his sorry ass on the spot. Lesson learned: money talks, don’t do business with racists.

So, I guess the big lesson is that while we can’t change our upbringing and the culture we were born in, we can change our actions and behavior. And maybe change some minds in the process.

Peace, brother.

Roadrunner