Reflecting further on my last post, I realize it suffers from incompleteness. While I and others may have experienced a renewed sense of unity and grace in the weeks and months following the horrific events of 9/11, I would be remiss to ignore the dark undercurrent to the national character that still haunts us. I refer to the demon of racism. For while many of us came together in a spirit of patriotism and humanitarianism in the wake of our collective tragedy, there certainly were others who began profiling those among us who were visibly different, particularly persons of middle eastern origin. I did not intend to wear glasses of such a rosy hue to forget my fellow American citizens and foreign nationals who fell victim then, and fall victim now, to racial stereotyping. Yet I look forward to the day, as a great man once said, when all people are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character; when profiling, stereotyping and persecuting fellow human beings based on their country of origin, their race, or whatever else makes them "different," will be relegated to a shameful but remote chapter of our distant past.
During my junior year in high school, I sat in the back of our auditorium listening to our drama teacher, Ruth Bair, attempt to persuade a large group of students to try out for the school play. With me, at least, she was successful. I auditioned for a part in Archibald MacLeish's "JB," a modern day drama based on the Book of Job. All I garnered that time was a walk-on part; better roles awaited me my senior year. But Mrs. Bair's little speech was enough to get me in the game. And the experience of performing in the school plays was the highlight of my high school years. What she said that I remember is this: "If you don't extend yourself, you haven't lived." Some memory of biology class made me think that this was both literally and figuratively true, though I'm not sure about the literal part, and it's only the figurative that matters to me. But through the years and decades that followed, whenever I was unsure about participatin
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