We could joke about it by then, for her worst fears hadn’t come to pass. I had graduated without
mishap, was accepted into several respectable schools, and settled on Occidental College in Los Angeles
mainly because I’d met a girl from Brentwood while she was vacationing in Hawaii with her family. But I was
still just going through the motions, as indifferent toward college as toward most everything else. Even
Frank thought I had a bad attitude, although he was less than clear about how I should change it.
What had Frank called college? An advanced degree in compromise. I thought back to the last time I
had seen the old poet, a few days before I left Hawaii. We had made small talk for a while; he complained
about his feet, the corns and bone spurs that he insisted were a direct result of trying to force African feet
into European shoes. Finally he had asked me what it was that I expected to get out of college. I told him I
didn’t know. He shook his big, hoary head.
“Well,” he said, “that’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t know. You’re just like the rest of these young
cats out here. All you know is that college is the next thing you’re supposed to do. And the people who are
old enough to know better, who fought all those years for your right to go to college-they’re just so happy to
see you in there that they won’t tell you the truth. The real price of admission.”
“And what’s that?”
“Leaving your race at the door,” he said. “Leaving your people behind.” He studied me over the top of
his reading glasses. “Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going
there to get trained. They’ll train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so
they don’t mean anything anymore. They’ll train you to forget what it is that you already know. They’ll train
you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all
that ****. They’ll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you you’re a credit to your
race. Until you want to actually start running things, and then they’ll yank on your chain and let you know
that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”
“So what is it you’re telling me-that I shouldn’t be going to college?”
Frank’s shoulders slumped, and he fell back in his chair with a sigh. “No. I didn’t say that. You’ve got to
go. I’m just telling you to keep your eyes open. Stay awake.”
It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was
as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had
created. Keep your eyes open, he had warned. It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Not in sunny L.A. Not as
you strolled through Occidental’s campus, a few miles from Pasadena, tree-lined and Spanish-tiled. The
students were friendly, the teachers encouraging. In the fall of 1979, Carter, gas lines, and breast-beating
were all on their way out. Reagan was on his way in, morning in America. When you left campus, you drove
on the freeway to Venice Beach or over to Westwood, passing East L.A. or South Central without even
knowing it, just more palm trees peeking out like dandelions over the high concrete walls. L.A. wasn’t all that
different from Hawaii, not the part you saw. Just bigger, and easier to find a barber who knew how to cut
your hair.