Last night was our last race and ethnicity class. MV wasn't feeling well, so about 40 minutes in to the two hour class, he posed the question "Where do you guys see the future of race relations in America?" (imagine that with a Jamaican accent.) Well.....
A certain radical among us opened his big mouth and said, "Revolution." Yes, folks, he said the "R" word. I mean, will Uncle Karl's legacy ever die out??? When we all reacted with distugsted disbelief he began to explain how, worldwide, all conditions for all oppressed people of color must get much worse before the world community unites in revolution. "People of Color of the world UNITE! You have nothing to loose but your chains!" He even spouted full-blown Marxist ideology, such as "Well, you see everyone, ideology cannot change unless material conditions change." Here's where it got really interesting...

There's a black woman in our class who is from the Ed School. She's getting a PhD. I like her a lot. She started shooting me these looks that said, "This guy is off his rocker! Please indicate to me that I'm not the only one who thinks this is a load of crap." So, I answered her pleading glances with my own disgust and disbelief. Anyway, Mr. Marx himself started arguing that for people who are poor and oppressed, they have no choices, so they are forced do criminal things in order to survive. Barb, the educated black woman, disagreed saying that "You will never get the black community to participate in a revolution because the black community in America is very based in faith. We see certain choices as moral or immoral and act accordingly." The best part was when she said, "You will NEVER get a black grandma to say 'My grandson is in jail for murder because he didn't have a choice in the matter. He had to do the murder' She would NEVER say that!" It was great.

Anyway, the real shocker came when he revealed that he was from a very poor background and most of his friends are either dead or in prison and the only reason he was able to escape was because of his "whiteness and maleness". I wanted to shout: "Hello, assclown!! You are saying this to a BLACK WOMAN who is here getting a PHD!!!" I mean, give me a break.

This kind of dialogue went on for about another hour, until MV said (in Jamaican accent) "Well, let's kill it. Class is over." On the way out, Barb expressed her disbelief to me and I had to shamefully inform her that, unfortunately, this guy is not alone in the Soc department. I said, "Chances are, you will find a very strong minority here who would fully agree with him." There was way more to the class than I could ever reproduce here...just let me say it was a sad sad day in sociology.

But, it made the class just fly by. At the end, I handed MV my 28 page paper and he said (in Jamaican accent) "Ah...the intellectual weight, I can just feel it. It's so heavy."