Why to be paranoid

I was at a wedding where I expected to see my old pal Mulenga Harangua. He wasn't at the wedding, so I swung by his house so we could chew the fat for a while. Mulenga always has something interesting to say. He's been squatting in an abandoned house on the west side since his girlfriend tossed him out. (I think it was after he maxed out her credit cards buying clothes in the effort to become a bigwig sexy Detroit man.) He actually fixed the place up with mostly scavenged material. It looks better than most of the homes on the block. There's a big vegetable garden in the back yard and herbs growing in the front.

I wandered past the chives, which had produced some lovely white blossoms, and climbed the creaky stairs onto the porch. The place was dark but I knocked anyhow. After not getting a response I gave the door a couple of good bangs. I saw the blinds flicker and a few moments later I heard a series of snaps as he undid the locks. When the door swung open there stood Mulenga with a dark-blue blanket over his head and shoulders like a hooded cape.

"Hi," he rasped, "come on in." He sounded like Darth Vader on a bad day. His skin was gray and sagging on his face. He turned and shuffled slowly back into the darkness of his catacombs.

"Mulenga, what's the matter? You look like death warmed over twice."

He made a few more guttural noises as he walked away from me.

"What?"

When we entered his living room, decorated with various pieces of scavenged furniture, he turned to me. "I'm feeling the pain of my people."

"The pain of your people, isn't that more of a metaphorical or psychological pain? You look like you had a run-in with Ndamukong Suh last night."

"I'm talking about real physical pain. My joints are all messed up. I can hardly move."

I've got arthritis in my neck and have suffered a few bouts of gout in my feet, so I've got some sympathy for folks who suffer joint pain. "When did this all start?"

"It started when I was back in high school."

"Sports injuries?"

"No, it was beatings from my teachers. My parents sent me to a Catholic school back when corporal punishment was in vogue. There were only a few brothers in the school and I stood out like a black bean in the grits. I was catching it all the time. While in high school I was hit with a baseball bat, a hockey stick, a rubber whip and fists. And that was from the teachers. I was flat-out punched in the face one time, knocked me off of my seat and busted a brand new pair of glasses."

"I find that a little hard to believe."

"Believe it, man. Obama's talking about it. Education Week magazine says that Obama is making racial differences in school discipline a high priority. It's about time. This guy, Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said that students of color are 'receiving different and harsher disciplinary punishments than whites for the same or similar infractions.'"

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