his place in a society that is increasingly multicultural but whose power
base remains white. As young black men they struggle with the stereotypicaF
images of what being black means in America. This is particularly true for
my older son, who learned bitterly what it meant to be black when, as a
young boy of 11, he was stopped by campus police at a Midwest university
and escorted off campus because he did not belong there. He was afraid to tell
them that his father was the vice president. My younger son, to my knowledge,
has not yet experienced racism at its ugliest. He remains open and accepting of
others. He hates talk of black people and white people and proudly proclaims
that all people are the same. For him, the important quality in a person is
whether he or she is nice.