Harvey Silverglate

I believe I tell it in The Shadow University because it was part of... I'm loving these stories, Harvey.

The stories are fabulous.

Let me tell you a story of... I did a tour of the country visiting campuses.

I visited a college called Hamline University.

I believe it was in Indiana or Illinois, somewhere in the Midwest.

And I attended a freshman orientation.

Now listen to this.

This was a freshman orientation.

The administrators...

The deans and the deanettes and the deputy assistant deans and deanettes and the third deputy assistant deans and deanettes lined the students up according to their skin hues.

Oh, boy.

The blonde, blue-eyed white folks were at one end.

The darkest African-Americans whose bloodlines had not yet mixed with any of the whites were

on the other end.

And the exercise was you had to tell how your race affected your success in life up until that point.

I thought it was the most demeaning thing that I could imagine.

Demeaning.

I thought to myself, they could do the same about sexual orientation.

They could do the same about religion.

They could do the same about national origin.