Fifty years ago I walked into Melvin Newton's office at Merritt College in Oakland, CA with my cute blond girlfriend and we asked to join his new class on Black Studies. Melvin's claim to fame was his brother Huey Newton, the head of the Black Panthers, on trial for murder at the time.

He sat behind his desk and smiled with amazement. He said the class was going to be filled with black kids expressing their outrage and anger against the white society that was repressing them. Did we really want to subject ourselves to that?

We said yes, and finally he said no. He felt it would be disruptive and the students wouldn't be able to express themselves freely.

Do such classes exist today? I don't know, maybe...