I left the United States almost thirty years ago, and I鈥檝e been following the American presidential campaign against my own better judgement. I find it hard to believe that we have now heard candidates for president deny slavery caused the Civil War, insist that the United States is not and has never been a racist country, and claim that immigrants are 鈥減oisoning鈥 the country鈥檚 blood. But then, in the quieter corners of the City on a Hill, a king鈥檚 pair of Ivy League presidents resigned recently within the mystery of how their respective Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion projects proved incapable of denouncing campus advocates for genocide.
I remember when my son was three and we had just exited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, built on the spot where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was shot. Up to that point in his brief life, my son had never uttered a racial thought, so far as I know. But on leaving the museum, cruising in his stroller back to the car, he pointed to a group of high school students in the parking lot and asked, 鈥淎re those black people?鈥 A museum built against racism had taught him race.
I know there is value attached to being aware and cosmopolitan and knowing what鈥檚 going on around the globe. But the more I hear and experience the world out there, the less I want in. So please, lose yourself with me in the words and images that follow. Whether the pieces make you wince, smile, feel, or think something you鈥檝e never thought, they are all written with hope because you have to hope to write. They鈥檙e a refuge from the junk that bombards us perpetually. Take your time. Make them last. They鈥檙e real too.