Tigers Into Butter

“Because Ann Arbor was a liberalism-on-steroids kind of place, it was soon decided that our high school needed to have a town meeting of some sort, with students of representative races meeting on a panel, and we could all talk our way into racial harmony. For some reason, I was selected to be a white kid on the panel. I remember a few things about that evening; indeed it would be hard not to remember them. One of my co-panelists was aggrieved over the book Little Black Sambo. But Sambo was not an African-American; he was from the subcontinent. And besides, as I recall saying that evening, I had nothing but the highest respect for Sambo. If anyone asked me to turn tigers into butter for my pancakes, I confess that I would be entirely nonplussed” (Black and Tan, p. 24).