At William Jewell College in 1964, growing the whole person was the mission rather than focus on career training, that was what distinguished us from the state university down the road. I was a 25 year-old freshman. The only degree offered was a classic Liberal Arts, BA. It was presumed that students would continue their education with graduate degrees from other institutions. For me, it was perfect. My cloistered little world opened up like poppies in the meadow and I’ve been on a journey of discovery now for 57 years.
In that first year I had to take two semesters of world history. Medieval History was the class that fit into my schedule, from the fall of Rome to the Reformation: it breeched two semesters and I could have dropped the second half for something else but I was hooked. The professor was my age, an ordained Baptist preacher, a baseball player, a great storyteller and my next door neighbor. I had absolutely no interest in anything Baptist but otherwise, we clicked. On the first day he held up our text book, nearly 600 pages. “Your reading assignment is this book” he said, “Read it.” His lectures didn’t follow the text but he always asked for questions on the reading; there were none, ever. He assumed, if you read the text then he could ramble with his own words, same story but on a parallel plane.
After our first class, leaning against the porch railing outside our apartments, I asked him, “Is it possible for me to make a B without reading the book?” I was a slow reader, it wasn’t my major and I didn’t need an A. He knew I was married, a veteran and a baseball player. There was a need to keep the teacher-student distance but in private, we were peers. His answer was surprisingly quick; “Sure, be in class every day, take copious notes and study them religiously.” Tests would be mostly essay questions so I needed to have full command, my own version of the story and I could do that from lectures.
I had never been a good student but at 25 I knew how to work. Unlike my classmates with academic credentials and study skills, I was on a trip like nothing I had ever experienced, like a parched sponge in a gentle rain. That shower saw me through those four years, through graduate school, through a career and hopefully through a few more years of putting one foot in front of the other.
This morning I listened to a local radio program where the host interviewed an expert on White Supremacy groups. Interestingly, the typical white supremacist is not a poor, uneducated red-neck who feels disenfranchised. Typical “Proud Boys” and “Oath Keepers” more likely have engineering degrees or something comparable. They can afford travel expenses to Washington D.C. to participate in an armed insurrection against the capitol and congress. Trying to pigeon hole the profile is difficult. What seems to be the common thread is a sense of presumed legitimacy and no reservations about using intimidation and violence. Where it comes from is hard to say but for sure, it has little or nothing to do with a lack of intelligence, education or affluence. I was not terribly surprised but at the same time found it particularly disturbing. Repeating something I have written recently, we all want to live in America but certainly not in the same country.
Today I chose to bury my head in the sand and think about better days. Racism was rampant in the 1960’s but my experience there was one of naive ignorance, intellectual awakening and great hope. I find it uncomfortably disarming now, taking comfort in those days when such evil designs prevailed, like feeling good that your house had escaped the bombs when all of your neighbors homes had been leveled. Still, my experience and my story have led me to this moment and I’m in as good a place, both literal and figuratively as I can hope to be. There is no magic red or blue pill, I don’t live in the Matrix, don’t have to make that choice here and now. So I vacillate between the myth of freedom and tribal hegemony at its worst. Hate is so seductive, so empowering, so easy to fall into its snare. Ironically, those groups are well represented by militant, self described evangelical Christians. Words fail me, I don’t know what to say.
In that first year I had to take two semesters of world history. Medieval History was the class that fit into my schedule, from the fall of Rome to the Reformation: it breeched two semesters and I could have dropped the second half for something else but I was hooked. The professor was my age, an ordained Baptist preacher, a baseball player, a great storyteller and my next door neighbor. I had absolutely no interest in anything Baptist but otherwise, we clicked. On the first day he held up our text book, nearly 600 pages. “Your reading assignment is this book” he said, “Read it.” His lectures didn’t follow the text but he always asked for questions on the reading; there were none, ever. He assumed, if you read the text then he could ramble with his own words, same story but on a parallel plane.
After our first class, leaning against the porch railing outside our apartments, I asked him, “Is it possible for me to make a B without reading the book?” I was a slow reader, it wasn’t my major and I didn’t need an A. He knew I was married, a veteran and a baseball player. There was a need to keep the teacher-student distance but in private, we were peers. His answer was surprisingly quick; “Sure, be in class every day, take copious notes and study them religiously.” Tests would be mostly essay questions so I needed to have full command, my own version of the story and I could do that from lectures.
I had never been a good student but at 25 I knew how to work. Unlike my classmates with academic credentials and study skills, I was on a trip like nothing I had ever experienced, like a parched sponge in a gentle rain. That shower saw me through those four years, through graduate school, through a career and hopefully through a few more years of putting one foot in front of the other.
This morning I listened to a local radio program where the host interviewed an expert on White Supremacy groups. Interestingly, the typical white supremacist is not a poor, uneducated red-neck who feels disenfranchised. Typical “Proud Boys” and “Oath Keepers” more likely have engineering degrees or something comparable. They can afford travel expenses to Washington D.C. to participate in an armed insurrection against the capitol and congress. Trying to pigeon hole the profile is difficult. What seems to be the common thread is a sense of presumed legitimacy and no reservations about using intimidation and violence. Where it comes from is hard to say but for sure, it has little or nothing to do with a lack of intelligence, education or affluence. I was not terribly surprised but at the same time found it particularly disturbing. Repeating something I have written recently, we all want to live in America but certainly not in the same country.
Today I chose to bury my head in the sand and think about better days. Racism was rampant in the 1960’s but my experience there was one of naive ignorance, intellectual awakening and great hope. I find it uncomfortably disarming now, taking comfort in those days when such evil designs prevailed, like feeling good that your house had escaped the bombs when all of your neighbors homes had been leveled. Still, my experience and my story have led me to this moment and I’m in as good a place, both literal and figuratively as I can hope to be. There is no magic red or blue pill, I don’t live in the Matrix, don’t have to make that choice here and now. So I vacillate between the myth of freedom and tribal hegemony at its worst. Hate is so seductive, so empowering, so easy to fall into its snare. Ironically, those groups are well represented by militant, self described evangelical Christians. Words fail me, I don’t know what to say.
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