We Are the World

At 5 o'clock in the morning, the radio alarm begins to blare the news. The United States is threatening to pull out of the World Conference Against Racism if the conversation includes tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. What a nightmare, I think as I sit up in bed. How can the most powerful and diverse country on earth refuse to go to the first global discussion of race? No one expected easy accord about what's racial and what's not, but to refuse to attend the discussion at all?

Perhaps I am unduly depressed because I am in a small motel somewhere in...South Dakota, is it? Or maybe San Diego? I made the terrible mistake of watching Planet of the Apes the night before, in this dim room whose walls are flocked in orange fuzz with silver trim. It is the end of a long week of speaking to organizations that have called me in because someone has done something like hang a big noose over a black person's work space, and they would like me--me!--to get everyone speaking again.

The last five days have involved flying into Pittsburgh or Salt Lake City or Tampa in order to take a shuttle to terminal Z, where militia members in camouflage or square dance teams in pouffy skirts or troupes of young missionaries take flights to and from small towns all over America in very small planes. I have been lining up behind them, boarding ancient Cessna prop planes seating ten--give or take carry-on weapons caches, guitars, extra Bibles and box of diversity pamphlets--and bounce low to the ground all the way to Saginaw or Elko or Huntsville or Dayton.

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