If We Lived In A Democratic State

One Of The Reasons I Came To Berkeley Was Because I Saw So Many Students Of All Different Colors Speaking So Many Different Languages And Ferociously Presenting All These Different Views. I Thought, This Is The 21st Century And I Want To Be Here!

We Need Everybody And All That We Are. We Need To Know And Make Known The Complete, Constantly Unfolding, Complicated Heritage That Is Our Black Experience. We Should Absolutely Resist The Superstar, One At A Time Mentality That Threatens The Varied And Resilient, Flexible Wealth Of Our Black Future.

In The Name Of Motherhood And Fatherhood And Education And Good Manners, We Threaten And Suffocate And Bind And Ensnare And Bribe And Trick Children Into Wholesale Emulation Of Our Ways.

Lately... Americans Have Begun To Understand That Trouble Does Not Start Somewhere On The Other Side Of Town. It Seems To Originate Inside The Absolute Middle Of The Homemade Cherry Pie. In Our History, The State Has Failed To Respond To The Weak. You Could Be White, Male, Presbyterian And Heterosexual Besides, But If You Get Fired Or If You Get Sick Tomorrow, You Might As Well Be Black, For All The State Will Want To Hear From You.

When We Heard About The Hippies, The Barely More Than Boys And Girls Who Decided To Try Something Different ... We Laughed At Them. We Condemned Them, Our Children, For Seeking A Different Future. We Hated Them For Their Flowers, For Their Love, And For Their Unmistakable Rejection Of Every Hideous, Mistaken Compromise That We Had Made Throughout Our Hollow, Money-bitten, Frightened, Adult Lives