Back in the city, shuttling from the quad – that’s my building, where I teach, on the right in the photograph – to the Junction, immediately outside the campus (in a few strides you go from one planet, a pseudo-Harvard Yard, to another, the urban ghetto), where 5 roads meet, where five subway exits open their mouths into the underworld, where Target, Subway, MacDonald’s, Burger King, and soon a 7-11 punctuate a mass of bargain stores. Older people dally, now that metal benches have been erected on the sidewalks; young people dally too, and rush in and out of mobile phone stores; all these people, and the salespersons, black. The only whites are students and faculty, heading to and coming from home.
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