I wrote a rant that appeared here last week, and the response was hellacious. I got e-mail from a heck of
a lot of thoughtful people, many who shared very personal stories about their lives and experiences. I
always try to answer the e-mails I get, but there were so many this time, I haven't been able to get to
every one of them. I will eventually, but there hasn't been enough time this last week.

I haven't said a lot so far about myself, so maybe if I write this piece about some things I've gone through,
it will help explain to some people why I get so angry about the way things are right now in this country.
So here's my first piece purely about me.

I grew up in a military (Air Force) family stationed just outside Cheyenne, Wyoming in the 60's and 70's.
Most Air Force families move around a lot, but my father was involved in the Minuteman missile project,
and it was based right around there, so they never moved us again. They shipped us there the day after I
got out of 2nd grade, and I went from 3rd grade all the way through college in Wyoming.

But to backtrack a bit, my parents both were born and raised in the deep south, my mother in Mississippi
and my father in Selma, Alabama (called the birthplace of the Civil Rights movement). From what my
father told me about his life (he didn't talk about himself much; I never really knew him well),
opportunities were pretty scarce down there, and he saw the military as his only way out. He joined the
Air Force and became a technician.

I'm the oldest of seven, and my parents always had it in their minds that we would grow up with the
advantages and opportunities they never had. From the few times I remember my father talking about his
early life, I picked up on a real sadness that he was carrying, that he didn't talk about. He was a macho
military type and he rode me as if I were a serviceman. I was pressed to do well, to excel in school. One
of the only times I ever saw him show any emotion was a time when I was still small on report card day.
I had gotten almost all A's.

He told me then that if I continued, I could be anything, even President of the United States. He had
tears in his eyes, and I could tell he really believed it.

I did well in school, and doing well in school was the only thing I cared about. I had no social life, because
every day after school, I came straight home and did my homework. Then it was time for dinner, and
afterward, my father would check my homework. When he was satisfied with it, I would read ahead in
my textbooks until it was time for bed.

I was a quiet kid and usually teacher's pet. I was also usually popular in school with my classmates, and
almost always the only black kid in my class. I was treated very well by my classmates and got a lot of
respect for setting the curve.

Into junior high I kept up the pattern. School and homework, school and homework. Then in eighth grade,
things changed in a big way. I had won several academic awards, placed very highly in a high profile
spelling contest at the State Capitol, you name it. All of a sudden, everyone in town seemed to know who
I was. Overnight, I was being invited to all the parties, everyone wanted me to come to their homes for
dinner, and I was being bombarded with requests for tutoring help. It was a whole different life than I'd
ever dreamed. Here I was, a nerd, and the most popular kid in school all of a sudden. But some people
didn't like it and wanted to put a stop to it.

Many of the other black kids at my school didn't like what they were seeing. I started getting beaten on
an almost daily basis because I dared to be friends with anyone who wanted to be friends with me, not
just the black kids. I had always been told at home that being a good person didn't depend on skin color,
and I should make my friends according to what kind of people they were, not what they looked like.
Apparently everyone wasn't getting told that at home.

I decided to be what I was, and anyone who didn't like it was the one with the problem. The decision I
made at age 14 is what still guides me today, in my 40's. If I could stand up to daily beatings as a 14 year
old and not back down, there's nothing that's going to change me now.

In later years, some of my tormentors and I actually got on good terms. Some of them went on to
become attorneys and are doing good, socially conscious work. One has told me that what happened
when we were kids was a result of the frustration that was being passed on to them from their parents.
Their parents had had tough lives, like my parents, but unlike my parents what was being passed to their
children was the mistrust and bitterness from their own lives. Their parents had grown up in the south
too, and the old resentments got brought with them. I was probably proving wrong their passed down
belief that there are no good white people and none who could be trusted. After several years, when we
were young men, some of them told me that it was good that I had learned to navigate in the "white world".

I went on to college on academic scholarships and grants. My parents had always wanted me to go, but
there was no way they could have afforded to send me. I majored in psychology at first and minored in
Spanish. Then I switched to organizational communication for my major. I always spoke and wrote well,
but I had to demonstrate that it was a skill with public speaking, debate, etc. I had no idea how handy that
would come in soon-Reagan was first elected a couple of years after I got my degree.

I had the misfortune of first trying to make my way in the world under Reagan. I had watched what I
thought was real progress being made in race relations, only to watch this country first come to a dead
stop and then backslide. I left Wyoming very innocent and naive, and found that I needed every ounce of
fight in me to live through the 80's and 90's.

I'll write more another time about some of the specific things I've gone through under the conservatives.
But for now it's enough to say that my anger comes because the things I grew up believing, that I was
taught in school simply are not true. My parents firmly and completely believed that this country was
becoming a place where I and my 6 brothers and sisters could live good lives unmolested because of the
color we were born. I have not gone through anywhere near the kinds of grief many other people of
color have resigned themselves to, but it's enough to have made me angry and needing to speak out.

I am almost grateful my father is not alive to see what his country has become. He passed away in 1985
from cancer. We never did get along, not really, but the older I get, the more I understand him and what
he wanted for me. I am angry because what he thought he was living his life for turns out to be a sham.
He had started to realize that in his last days. He had become angry and bitter and watched C-Span
almost 24 hours a day feeling that an eye needed to be kept on those people, and it turns out he was right.
One of the reasons we did not get along was that since I became more educated (formally) than he did,
we lived in completely different worlds. He wanted me to be educated, and when I was, we did not see
eye to eye. He did live to see me achieve something he could never dream of for himself-opportunities.
Sometimes when I whine to myself about how demeaning my current job is and how unfulfilling, I realize
that he would have never been allowed in the door. Much of what I take for granted, he could never
have dreamed of for himself. At the same time I look back at the times I didn't want to be like him, I
realize that in one way at least I am. I'm a fighter too. I think it took much courage for him to live the life
he did, that things were much harder for him than he ever let on to me about. He was too military for me,
but I realize the military very likely saved his life.

When Martin Luther King won, I believe, the Nobel Peace Prize in about 1965, he sat me down and
explained who he was. He tried to explain to me what King's battle was about, and what prejudice is, and
that the reason he was going to be pushing me was that he didn't want me to have to go through it. That
was my father's dream. He passed away before I attained enough maturity to understand what he meant.

I have anger because I want to believe this country is great. I have anger because the ideals I was raised
to have are a myth now, and the current powers-that-be have convinced certain impressionable and
uncritical people that people like me-like us, black, white, yellow, whatever-that have these ideas are a
menace that needs to be stamped out, that we are what is wrong with this country.

I have anger because we have so much work to do and we're not doing it. As long as there is one person
in this country who is being held back, we all have work to do. It's not enough for people to say that
we're fine because we're the best country in the world. We can be so much better, and everybody has to
be pushing for that goal.

I have a forum now and I'm going to use it. I'm going to use the hell out of it. I angered a few people with
my tirade last week, because I think my outrage made people uneasy who like the way things are.
Good-they need to be uncomfortable.
As the saying goes, I want to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

I have more to say but I'll leave it for another column. I did want to pass this poem on. It was sent to me
last week by a kind, gentle soul named Cecilia. She responded to my ranting, and I'm proud that she's on
our side. This poem says how I feel much better than I could ever hope to in my own words.
 
Let America Be America Again
  by Langston Hughes

     Let America be America again.
     Let it be the dream it used to be.
     Let it be the pioneer on the plain
     Seeking a home where he himself is free.

     (America never was America to me.)

     Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
     Let it be that great strong land of love
     Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
     That any man be crushed by one above.

     (It never was America to me.)

     O, let my land be a land where Liberty
     Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
     But opportunity is real, and life is free,
     Equality is in the air we breathe.

     (There's never been equality for me,
     Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

     Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
     And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

     I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
     I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
     I am the red man driven from the land,
     I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
     And finding only the same old stupid plan
     Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

     I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
     Tangled in that ancient endless chain
     Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
     Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
     Of work the men! Of take the pay!
     Of owning everything for one's own greed!

     I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
     I am the worker sold to the machine.
     I am the Negro, servant to you all.
     I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
     Hungry yet today despite the dream.
     Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
     I am the man who never got ahead,
     The poorest worker bartered through the years.

     Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
     In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
     Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
     That even yet its mighty daring sings
     In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
     That's made America the land it has become.
     O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
     In search of what I meant to be my home--
     For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
     And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
     And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
     To build a "homeland of the free."

     The free?

     Who said the free? Not me?
     Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
     The millions shot down when we strike?
     The millions who have nothing for our pay?
     For all the dreams we've dreamed
     And all the songs we've sung
     And all the hopes we've held
     And all the flags we've hung,
     The millions who have nothing for our pay--
     Except the dream that's almost dead today.

     O, let America be America again--
     The land that never has been yet--
     And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
     The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
     Who made America,
     Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
     Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
     Must bring back our mighty dream again.

     Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
     The steel of freedom does not stain.
     From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
     We must take back our land again,
     America!

     O, yes,
     I say it plain,
     America never was America to me,
     And yet I swear this oath--
     America will be!

     Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
     The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
     We, the people, must redeem
     The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
     The mountains and the endless plain--
     All, all the stretch of these great green states--
     And make America again!