This is what he is really trying to 12-step around, he says to me one afternoon. An addiction to a lifestyle. He is working hard, once again, to hold himself accountable, which stirs the question in me: Who has ever been accountable to Black people or to my father, a man the world always presented with limited choices? My father attended schools that did little more than train him to serve another man’s dreams, ensure another man’s wealth, produce another man’s vision. The schooling available to my parents’ generation did not encourage creativity, the fostering of dreams, the watering of the
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