Since you don't name names I don't know who you are calling out, but I think ending racism needs many people to apply their own unique talents in many different ways. Obama found his, but I think it's just as important that academics find theirs...
So there's another guy on the team who is my weight. We were the same weight. He was a senior, talented fellow, majoring in economics, in fact he became a Rhodes scholar during the year. And we had a nice good workout, we're coming out, and he said "How's it going? Neil, how's it going?". I'm a freshman. "How's it going?". I said "Oh all my problem sets are kicking my butt, I barely have time to go to the bathroom", and he said "Oh what was it you were majoring in again?". I said "Physics" and he said "Well, and you want to do what with that?", and I said "I want to get a Ph.D. in astrophysics". And you know what he said to me? By the way, what was he going to do with his Rhodes fellowship at Oxford? He was going to explore the role of enterprise zones in inner city neighborhoods to empower those who were economically disenfranchised.
Okay. He's black, by the way. So, he turns to me and said "Astrophysics?". Then he says the following: "The black community cannot afford the luxury of someone with your intellect to spend it on that subject". And I was devastated by that comment. Devastated. Now he wasn't just anybody saying it, this is somebody who was walking the walk, and talking the talk. And so, I had no way out of that. He dug a hole, and put me in the hole. And I had no shovel and no ladder, no way to- there was in a hole, trying to think my way out of it. And I knew my interest in the universe was real because I felt it in my heart, I felt it coursing through my veins, but my responsibility as an educated member of society was eating away at that ambition.
In the absence of another way to think about the problem, I just kept at it, but with this albatross around my neck, this, this guilt that maybe I wasn't doing all I could to help others.
Years later, he was asked to appear on TV for his astrophysics expertise. When he saw his own interview, he was struck by the thought that this was the first time he'd seen an African American interviewed as an expert on a topic not related to race:
Neil: Thank you! I said to myself, "I just have to be visible, or others like me, in that situation". That would have a greater force on society than anything else I could imagine. Anything else. And so, to this day, I'm getting email from white people saying they wish they were as smart as I was. That was an unthinkable thing thirty years ago. It just would not have ever happened. White people wishing they were smart like black people. And so, um, so, so, then said to myself, "It's not that the black community can't afford to have me do astrophysics, it can't afford for me to NOT do astrophysics", and at that point, I find myself standing outside the hole. I'd climbed out, just the act of observing that interview. And since then, there have been other interviews with uh, intellectuals of minority groups that have nothing to do with their being a minority. But I think that might have been the first ever. And I'll tell you why I think it was the first, not that I've seen every single broadcast up until that minute of every channel, but it was another five years before I saw it happen again. That's why I think it was- then you're looking, it's like you buy a new car and everybody somehow has your car that you're driving, how did that happen? Well you're now looking for it. So I was looking for it, and it went another five years.
Again, I don't know who you're calling out, but there's not just one right way to do things, and just because someone is an academic doesn't mean they had the right combination of talent, opportunity and motivation to do the kinds of things Barack Obama has done.
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