Naturally, books lined the wall of Harvard’s African American Studies Department. Like cookbooks filled with page after page of savory recipes, these books offered recipes for making thought a sumptuous and lasting mainstay. A bust of Dr. W.E.B. Dubois welcomed all who entered this academic kitchen to become intellectual chefs preparing courses for thought and cultural development. Nourishment of the mind requires specific and measured ingredients, like studies in math, science and technology to create logical dishes for consumption. The future Dr. Wasow politely opened his cerebral cabinet and prepared for some cognitive cooking — each course more brilliant and enticing than the last powerful meal of thoughtful and brilliant courses.
First on the menu was a discourse on the relationship between words and ideas. The latin motto En sano, En mano or Health in Mind, Health in Body could release an entire generation from the throes of poor choices if they’d historically consumed more in the way of healthcare services and information. I thought of the ongoing debate regarding healthcare in this nation and it was clear that some fundamental aspects of that discussion were being kept from the people who could benefit greatly from radically altering the bitter mind meal being served to the nation.
Knowledge provided the stock for the main course. Intelligence and enlightenment are key ingredients to making each savory sampling an explosion of flavors and possibilities for better living.
Omar Wasow made his selection á la carte — the War on Drugs. He dedicated his conversation while consuming this course to better ways to prepare African American men for their particular plights. This would provide the fare for feasting on an ample banquet of ideas and insight regarding the community’s appetite for mind numbing substances and unsavory sources of cash. Generations of addicts and addicting behavior would feed on the spoils and worsen their circumstances.
Scholars suffer from viewing the world with an insatiable appetite for learning and life, while the disadvantaged starve their minds and devour half-baked conjecture, which leaves them empty and ravenous.
Omar and I then indulged in a dessert to memorialize our mental meal and like his mentor Dr. Henry Louis Gates we moved on to the nuggets of knowledge and nurturing minds, bodies and spirits through the healthy consumption of ideas. Wasow peaked my interests and even further when he discussed his efforts to recruit other African American connoisseurs of thought to participate in Ph.D. programs. We finished dining on discussions of social mobility and dabbled in his accomplishments as the co-founder of Black Planet, his appearance on “Oprah” and his work advising cable news channels regarding state-of-the-art-technology. It was all very fulfilling and filling. –munson steed
