Trikingly, there are those who believe that a black whose views regarding affirmative action and free speech are like mine is a black who cannot have suffered much.  Suffice it to say that there is no direct correlation between suffering and the views that one holds.  After all, Nancy Cantor views regarding affirmative action and free speech cannot be tied to her having suffered as a black or a Latin or an Arab.  So those minorities who delight in the way that she is steering the ship of state called Syracuse University cannot for a moment think that the only credentials that make it possible to be a qualified captain is that one has suffered as a (visible) minority.  Or so it is if their confidence in her is genuine.  As for my personal life, I will just say this: I am the black who did a formal proof in philosophy of logic that was entirely correct but for which the professor would not give me a grade of "A" because he did not think that I was intellectually capable of understanding what I had done.  I am also that black who as an Oberlin College professor threatened to resign in mid-semester should the college suspend the 39 students arrested for interrupting a Board of Trustee's meeting of the college in protest of the college having stock in companies that did business companies in Apartheid South Africa.  This stance I took as a gesture of gratitude for those blacks who sacrificed so that I might see a better day. That stance carried the day.  My very soul is witness to the scars and the victories of the struggle for equality.  I do not wallow in the former.  Rather, I rejoice in the latter.  Case closed.   

These remarks were written as a simple response to a comment upon the previous post "Universities and the Catholic Church".