OPINION — In my youth, the hope that American democracy based on enlightenment ideals of liberty, self-governance, equal opportunity and justice would defeat the worldview of domination and unfairly profiting from others’ labor, knowledge and resources was widespread.
Scholastic and athletic contests taught us that how you played the game — by the rules, cooperating, making friends and graciously accepting the outcome — was far more important than who won or lost. Your own honor and reputation and everyone’s self-respect and dignity rested on your conduct.
Hidden from sight in Arizona, children of non-white farm workers studied in Quonset huts in a dirt field while we learned in landscaped brick buildings. Japanese American children returned from desert internment camps to resume lives interrupted by incarceration, my college roommates told me.
