I Couldn't Adjust To The Racism In

Of All My Father's Teachings, The Most Enduring Was The One About The True Measure Of A Man. That True Measure Was How Well He Provided For His Children, And It Stuck With Me As If It Were Etched In My Brain.

I Learned To Hear Silence. That's The Kind Of Life I Lived: Simple. I Learned To See Things In People Around Me, In My Mom, Dad, Brothers And Sisters.

Child Psychologists Have Demonstrated That Our Minds Are Actually Constructed By These Thousands Of Tiny Interactions During The First Few Years Of Life. We Aren't Just What We're Taught. It's What We Experience During Those Early Years - A Smile Here, A Jarring Sound There - That Creates The Pathways And Connections Of The Brain. We Put Our Kids To Fifteen Years Of Quick-cut Advertising, Passive Television Watching, And Sadistic Video Games, And We Expect To See Emerge A New Generation Of Calm, Compassionate, And Engaged Human Beings?

I Knew What It Was To Be Uncomfortable In A Movie Theater Watching Unfolding On The Screen Images Of Myself - Not Me, But Black People - That Were Uncomfortable.

A Good Deed Here, A Good Deed There, A Good Thought Here, A Good Comment There, All Added Up To My Career In One Way Or Another.