HOW TO BEAD A ROGUE ELEPHANT The Musings Of A Jewelry Designer: Race

My academic advisor in my graduate Urban Planning program at Rutgers University was black. I probably should say happened to be black. Black has nothing to do with her working as a professor or as my advisor. The English language and our Culture and Society do not provide us with better words and phrases to distinguish someone’s characteristics and heritage without implied value judgments and stereotypes and assumptions. This is an article about racism, so her ethnicity is important, but has no relationship to the professorship or advisor-ship. The better words fail me.

In any case, I loved her dearly. She was so instrumental in guiding me through health planning theory and applications. She was a much-needed sounding board in my job as a health planner for a private revitalization agency in New Brunswick, NJ called New Brunswick Tomorrow. I could not have assisted the ushering in of a rehabilitation center, or designing a maternal-child health system, or leading a community board in developing a health plan, without her. I would not have left my job to pursue a doctorate degree in Public Health in Chapel Hill at the University of North Carolina without her encouragement and advice.

A few years later, while I was still in my doctoral program, she happened to be in Chapel Hill. Her husband was…