I Come From A Great

A Good Deed Here, A Good Deed There, A Good Thought Here, A Good Comment There, All Added Up To My Career In One Way Or Another.

I Was The Only Black Person On The Set. It Was Unusual For Me To Be In A Circumstance In Which Every Move I Made Was Tantamount To Representation Of 18 Million People.

Okay Listen, You Think I'm So Inconsequential? Then Try This On For Size. All Those Who See Unworthiness When They Look At Me And Are Given Thereby To Denying Me Value - To You I Say, I'm Not Talking About Being As Good As You. I Hereby Declare Myself Better Than You.

My Mother Was The Most Amazing Person. She Taught Me To Be Kind To Other Women. She Believed In Family. She Was With My Father From The First Day They Met. All That I Am, She Taught Me.

But Perhaps More Important, As Someone Wishing To Make A Comment Or Two About Contemporary Life And Values, I Don't Have To Dig Through Libraries Or Travel To Exotic Lands To Arrive At A View Of Our Modern Situation Refracted Through The Lens Of The Preindustrial World, Or The Uncommercialized, Unfranchised, Perhaps Unsanitized-and Therefore Supposedly More "authentic"-perspective Ofthe Third World. Very Simply, This Is Because That "other" World, As Alien As If Separated By Centuries In Time, Is The One From Which I Came