Choice Or Circumstance of Birth

This man (a), in spite his rabid racism, his swastika tattoo and passion for Hitler, despite his avowed and continued pride in having killed “Arabs” — is not just a monster. He is also the product of a cycle of poverty and neglect, with a mother who once told him she had been $50 short of having the money required to abort him; a young charge turned over to a state system of detention and incarceration.

This man (b): Was born in Wichita, Kansas, the son of Isabel and Melville. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. He graduated from High School in 1961. Then received a scholarship to attend the College of William and Mary, graduating in 1965 with a B.A in history.

Choice Or Circumstance of Birth

Man (a):Ten days after 9/11, self-professed “Texas loud, Texas proud” Mark Stroman walked into a Dallas mini-mart, pulled out a gun and asked the brown man working behind the counter where he was from. The hesitation in the clerk’s reply was enough to unleash Stroman’s hatred for Muslims, whom he referred to as people with “shawls on their face.” Stroman pulled the trigger, but his victim, Raisuddin Bhuiyan, an enterprising immigrant from Bangladesh — and a Muslim, indeed — would survive. The other two victims from the fortnight’s vigilante shooting spree, immigrants from India and Pakistan, would not.

(From Anand Giridharadas’s “The True American”.)

Man (b) Robert Gates on August 1, 2002, he became the 22nd President of Texas A&M.

Paul Hunter

.