ex factor
Mi profesor de composición inglesa es un hombre pequeño, lindo, serio, de sonrisa económica. Su especialidad son los autores Afro-Americanos. Entre los alumnos hay un par de personas negras y 35 personas ¨blancas¨, vietnamitas, chinas, del medio oriente, latinoamericanas, europeas del este y del oeste.
Mi profesor habla hilando hechos inconexos, saltando de la esclavitud a los sesentas, citando a Mary J Blige y a Lauryn Hill, recitando versos de un spiritual por aquí y una expresión de hip hop por allá. Varias veces he querido levantar la mano sólo para señalar este escenario insólito, este destino imposible y sin embargo papable, que quizás jamás se imaginó James Baldwin, a quien leemos en silencio:
” I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man’s definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers—your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”
