I sat day after day allowing that television to teach me that the most important thing in life was to be liked. By everybody. Between its teachings at home and social life at school, I learned that the whiter you acted, the better liked you were. So I changed the way that I spoke to mimic the characters on television.
Ok, I was a neon white little redneck farm boy with a thick southern drawl, not a poor black child. But the television played exactly the same role.
