Stephen wrote eloquently about racism earlier this week in support of International Blog Against Racism Week, and the further I get away from my comment in reply, the more self-frustrated I get.

I still think my best experience in life when it comes to race relations was living on a white-minority hall at MSMS for a year. I did a lot of listening that year.

I guess what I needed to say—and didn’t—is that I learned a lot by shutting up. I need to do that a lot more.

The other thing that got me to really thinking recently was watching the first six hours of Eyes on the Prize. I don’t know why it didn’t hit me at any level other than intellectual before, but as I watched, I realized: “The decade I value most as a fan of space history and the decade to be most valued in bringing about civil rights change are one and the same.” It helped me to realize that all these important events in our nation’s history—truly starting us down the path of equality—just weren’t that long ago. When I think about that, it gives me pause. What it drives home is a very simple message: these changes started not long ago, and we are still feeling the first- and second-order effects. Our racial rifts in this country formed over a couple of centuries, and four decades is not going to erase that collective memory. It’s a start. We have to keep walking … together.