OBAMA'S DREAMS FROM MY FATHER

But I was still just going through the motions, as indifferent toward college as toward almost everything else. Even my wise black friend Frank thought that I had a bad attitude.

'You're just like the rest of these young cats out here,' he said. 'All you know is that college is the next thing you're supposed to do. The real price of admission is that you leave your race at the door.

'Understand something, boy. You're not going to college to get educated. You're going there to get trained. They'll train you so good, you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that s**t.

'They'll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you that you're a credit to your race.

'Until you want to start running things, and then they'll yank on your chain and let you know you may be a well-trained, well-paid n****r, but you're a n****r just the same.'

To avoid being mistaken for a sell-out, I chose my friends carefully. The politically active black students. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punkrock performance poets. It was 1979 and Ronald Reagan was on his way to the White House. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.

There were enough black students on campus for us to move as a tribe ..