PROLOGUE

I met Dick Wilson in a business administration class at the University of San Francisco. It was summer session and Dick was taking graduate classes in the evening to advance himself on the job. I had published an article the previous spring in which I strongly criticized a government-funded job training program. Dick's professor was impressed by it and asked me to speak to his class about job opportunities for minority people.

Normally I would not agree to speak at a business administration class. I do not think of businessmen as open people. They certainly are not my “kind” of people. Their button-down demeanor clashes with my bearded, semi-long-haired appearance. I do not even own a tie. I am not very sympathetic to their interests or concerns, and do not see myself as a sociological missionary. I doubt that much can be accomplished by a meeting of this sort. But I wanted to interview businessmen for this study and figured I might meet some willing people at the class. So I agreed to address them and decided my remarks should be low key and as nonantagonistic as possible; I did not want to eliminate interview possibilities.

When I arrived at the class I realized it would not be so easy to maintain a nonantagonistic posture. The professor had also invited a successful black entrepreneur; a man who had made it from rags to riches. He was supposed to rebut me.