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the protection of reflective academia, an indulgence which I thought I could not have afforded, before, but always wanted, interestingly enough. If I were not black, I think I would have been the typical objective, detached, withdrawn academician, building my prestige upon the degree of my remoteness from the real world. It was always in the back of my mind, you know -- Kenneth Clark, the burden, the particular burden of being black, for you, is that you really can't afford the oasis which you see so many of your colleagues enjoying. And I envied everybody. I wanted it, and couldn't do it. But now I had the excuse to do it. I mean, I'd been clobbered. I'd been betrayed. You know, I was suffering from a tremendous case of self pity. I really was -- no matter how I tried to pretend, deep inside, I was hurt like hell. I mean. I was just, like convalescence, and the rest of my life was going to be spent at the college.
I was a full professor at the time, I think, and fairly well known, and it was clear that I could have my pick of graduate courses.
But again, a perverse stupidity -- you know, there is something about me that is persistently masochistic, and which raised questions as to the sincerity of the things I say I want to do, because I really do them.
Instead of going back to the college, and pulling these protections around me, you know, and seeing occasional graduate students, and assuming responsibility for two or three dissertations,
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